BAD COOKIES
There are days when I get up in the morning and stagger into the bathroom and begin running water and then I look up and I don’t even recognize my own toothbrush in the mirror. I mean, the object looks strange, oddly particular in its design, strange tapered handle and slotted, miter-cut bristles, and I wonder if I’ve ever looked at it closely before or whether someone snuck in overnight and substituted this new toothbrush for my old one. I have this relationship to objects in general—they will sometimes become uncontrollably new and vivid to me, and I don’t know whether this is a symptom of Tourette’s or not. I’ve never seen it described in the literature. Here’s the strangeness of having a Tourette’s brain, then: no control in my personal experiment of self. What might be only strangeness must always be auditioned for relegation to the domain of symptom, just as symptoms always push into other domains, demanding the chance to audition for their moment of acuity or relevance, their brief shot—coulda been a contender!—at centrality. Personalityness. There’s a lot of traffic in my head, and it’s two-way.
This morning’s strangeness was refreshing, though. More than refreshing—revelatory. I woke early, having failed to draw my curtains, the wall above my bed and the table with melted candle, tumbler quarter full of melted ice, and sandwich crumbs from my ritual snack now caught in a blaze of white sunlight, like the glare of a projector’s bulb before the film is threaded. It seemed possible I was the first awake in the world, possible the world was new. I dressed in my best suit, donned Minna’s watch instead of my own, and clipped his beeper to my hip. Then I made myself coffee and toast, scooped the long-shadowed crumbs off the table, sat and savored breakfast, marveling at the richness of existence with each step. The radiator whined and sneezed and I imitated its sounds out of sheer joy, rather than helplessness. Perhaps I’d been expecting that Minna’s absence would snuff the world, or at least Brooklyn, out of existence. That a sympathetic dimming would occur. Instead I’d woken into the realization that I was Minna’s successor and avenger, that the city shone with clues.
It seemed possible I was a detective on a case.
I crept downstairs past Danny, who was sleeping on his arms on the countertop, black suit jacket shrugged up around his shoulders, small patch of drool on his sleeve. I switched off the coffee machine, which was roasting a quarter inch of coffee into sour perfume, and went outside. It was a quarter to seven. The Korean keeper of the Casino was just rolling up his gate, tossing his bundles of the News and the Post inside. The morning was clarifyingly cold.
I started the L&L Pontiac. Let Danny sleep, let Gilbert wait in his cell, let Tony be missing. I’d go to the Zendo. Let it be too early for the monks or mobsters hidden there—I’d have the advantage of surprise.
By the time I’d parked and made my way to the Zendo, the Upper East Side was warming into life, shopkeepers rolling fruit stands out of their shops, sidewalk vendors of stripped paperbacks unloding their boxes, women already dressed for business glancing at their watches as they hustled their dogs’ waste into Baggies. The doorman at the entranceway next door was someone new, a kid with a mustache and uniform, not my harasser from yesterday. He was probably green, without tenure, stuck working the end of the overnight shift. I figured it was worth a shot anyway. I crooked a finger at him through the glass and he came out into the cold. “What’s your name?” I said.
“Walter, sir.”
“Walter sir-what?” I broadcast a cop-or-employer vibe.
“Walter is, uh, my last name. Can I help you with something?” He looked concerned, for himself and his building.
“Helpmewalter—I need the name of the doorman working last night, about six-thirty, seven. Older gentleman than yourself, maybe thirty-five, with an accent.”
“Dirk?”
“Maybe. You tell me.”
“Dirk’s the regular man.” He wasn’t sure he should be telling me this.
I averted my gaze from the his shoulder. “Good. Now tell me what you know about the Yorkville Zendo.” I indicated the bronze plaque next door with a jerk of my thumb. “Dirkweed! Dirkman!”
“What?” He goggled his eyes at me.
“You see them come and go?”
“I guess.”
“Walter Guessworth!” I cleared my throat deliberately. “Work with me here, Walter. You must see stuff. I want your impressions.”
I could see him sorting through layers of exhaustion, boredom, and stupidity. “Are you a cop?”
“Why’d you think that?”
“You, uh, talk funny.”
“I’m a guy who needs to know things, Walter, and I’m in a hurry. Anyone come and go from the Zendo lately? Anything catch your eye?”
He scanned the street to see if anyone saw us talking. I took the opportunity to cover my mouth with my hand and make a brief panting sound, like an excited dog.
“Uh, not much happens late at night,” said Walter. “It’s pretty quiet around here.”
“A place like the Zendo must attract some weird traffic.”
“You keep saying Zendo,” he said.
“It’s right there, etched in brass.” Itched in Ass.
He stepped toward the street, craned his neck, and read the plaque. “Hmmm. It’sour ee a religious school, right?”
“Right. You ever see anyone suspicious hanging around? Big Polish guy in particular?”
“How would I know he was Polish?”
“Just think about big. We’re talking really, really big.”
He shrugged again. “I don’t think so.” His numb gaze wouldn’t have taken in a crane and wrecking ball going through next door, let alone an outsize human figure.
“Listen, would you keep an eye out? I’ll give you a number to call.” I had a stash of L&L cards in my wallet, and I fished one out for him.
“Thanks,” he said absently, glancing at the card. He wasn’t afraid of me anymore. But he didn’t know what to think of me if I wasn’t a threat. I was interesting, but he didn’t know how to be interested.
“I’d appreciate hearing from you—Doorjerk! Doorjam! Jerkdom!—if you see anything odd.”
“You’re pretty odd,” he said seriously.
“Something besides me.”
“Okay, but I get off in half an hour.”
“Well, just keep it in mind.” I was running out of patience with Walter. I freed myself to tap his shoulder farewell. The dull young man looked down at my hand, then went back inside.
I paced the block to the corner and back, flirting with the Zendo, seeking my nerve. The site aroused reverence and a kind of magical fear in me already, as though I were approaching a shrine—the martyrdom of Saint Minna. I wanted to rewrite their plaque to tell the story. Instead I rang the doorbell once. No answer. Then four more times, for a total of five, and I stopped, startled by a sense of completeness.
I’d shrugged off my tired old friend six.
I wondered if it was in some way commemorative—my counting tic moving down a list, subtracting a digit for Frank.
Somebody is hunting Minna Men, I thought again. But I couldn’t be afraid. I wasn’t game but hunter this morning. Anyway, the count was off—four Minna Men plus Frank made five. So if I was counting heads, I should be at four. I had an extra aboard, but who? Maybe it was Bailey. Or Irving.
A long minute passed before the girl with the short black hair and glasses opened the door and squinted at me against the morning sun. She wore a T-shirt, jeans, had bare feet, and held a broom. Her smile was slight, involuntary, and crooked. And sweet.
“Yes?”
“Could I ask you a few questions?”
“Questions?&m”>
“If it’s not too early,” I said gently.
“No, no. I’ve been up. I’ve been sweeping.” She showed me the broom.
“They make you clean?”
“It’s a privilege. Cleaning is treasured in Zen practice. It’s like the highest possible act. Usually Roshi wants to do the sweeping himself.”
“No vacuum cleaner?” I said.
“Too noisy,” she said, and frowned as if it should be obvious. A city bus roared past in the distance, damaging her point. I let it go.
Her eyes adjusted to the brightness, and she looked past me, to the street, examining it as though astonished to discover that the door opened onto a cityscape. I wondered if she’d been out of the building since I saw her enter the evening before. I wondered if she ate and slept there, whether she was the only one who did or whether there were dozens, foot soldiers of Zen.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “What were you saying?”
“Questions.”
“Oh, yes.”
“About the Zendo, what you do here.”
She looked me over now. “Do you want to come inside? It’s cold.”
“I’d like that very much.”
It was the truth. I didn’t feel unsafe following her into the dark temple, the Deathstar. I would gather information from within the Trojan Horse of her Zen grace. And I was conscious of my ticlessness, didn’t want to break the rhythm of the conversation.
The foyer and stairwell were plain, with unadorned white walls and a wooden banister, looking as if it had been clean before she began sweeping, clean forever. We bypassed a door on the ground floor and went up the stairs, she carrying the broom ahead of her, turning her back to me trustingly. Her walk had a gentle jerkiness to it, a quickness like her replies.
“Here,” she said, pointing to a rack with rows of shoes on it.
“I’m fine,” I said, thinking I was supposed to select from among the motley footgear.
“No, take yours off,” she whispered.
I did as she told me, removed my shoes and pushed them into an orderly place at the end of one of the racks. A chill went through me when I recalled that Minna had removed his shoes the evening before, presumably at this same landing.
Now in my socks, I followed her as the banister wrapped around through a corridor, past two sealed doors and one that opened onto a bare, dark room with rows of short cloth mats laid out across a parquet floor and a smell ocandles or incense, not a morning smell at all. I wanted to peer inside but she hurried us along, up another flight.
On the third landing she led me to a small kitchen where a wooden table and three chairs were arranged around a thwarted back window, through which an emaciated shaft of sunlight negotiated a maze of brick. If the massive buildings on either side had existed when this room was built they might not have bothered with a window. The table, chairs and cabinets of the kitchen were as undistinguished and homely as a museum diorama of Cree or Shaker life, but the teapot she set out was Japanese, and its hand-painted calligraphic designs were the only stretch, the only note of ostentation.
I seated myself with my back to the wall, facing the door, thinking of Minna and the conversation I’d heard through the wire. She took water off a low flame and filled the pot, then put a tiny mug without a handle in front of me and filled it with an unstrained swirling confetti of tea. I warmed my chapped hands around it gratefully.
“I’m Kimmery.”
“Lionel.” I felt Kissdog rising in me and fought it back.
“You’re interested in Buddhism?”
“You could say that.”
“I’m not really who you should talk to but I can tell you what they’ll say. It’s not about getting centered, or, you know, stress reduction. A lot of people—Americans, I mean—have that idea. But it’s really a religious discipline, and not easy at all. Do you know about zazen?”
“Tell me.”
“It’ll make your back hurt a lot. That’s one thing.” She rolled her eyes at me, already commiserating.
“You mean meditation.”
“Zazen, it’s called. Or sitting. It sounds like nothing, but it’s the heart of Zen practice. I’m not very good at it.”
I recalled the Quakers who’d adopted Tony, and their brick meetinghouse across eight lanes of traffic from St. Vincent’s. Sunday mornings we could look through their tall windows and see them gathered in silence on hard benches. “What’s to be good at?” I said.
“You have no idea. Breathing, for starters. And thinking, except it’s not supposed to be thinking.”
“Thinking about not thinking?”
“Not thinking about it. One Mind, they call it. Like realizing that everything has Buddha nature, the flag and the wind are the same thing, that sort of stuff.”
I wasn’t exactly following her, but One Mind seemed an honorable goal, albeit positively chimerical. “Could we—could I sit with you sometime? Or is it done alone?”
“Both. But here at the Zendo thereߣs regular sessions.” She lifted her cup of tea with both hands, steaming her glasses instantly. “Anyone can come. And you’re really lucky if you stick around today. Some important monks from Japan are in town to see the Zendo, and one of them is going to talk this evening, after zazen.”
Important monks, imported rugs, unimportant ducks—jabber was building up in the ocean of my brain like flotsam, and soon a wave would toss it ashore. “So it’s run out of Japan,” I said. “And now they’re checking up on you—like the Pope coming in from Rome.”
“Not exactly. Roshi set the Zendo up on his own. Zen isn’t centralized. There are different teachers, and sometimes they move around.”
“But Roshi did come here from Japan.” From the name I pictured a wizened old man, a little bigger than Yoda in Return of the Jedi.
“No, Roshi’s American. He used to have an American name.”
“Which was?”
“I don’t know. Roshi just basically means teacher, but that’s the only name he has anymore.”
I sipped my scalding tea. “Does anyone else use this building for anything?”
“Anything like what?”
“Killing me!—sorry. Just anything besides sitting.”
“You can’t shout like that in here,” she said.
“Well, if—kissing me!—something strange was going on, say if Roshi were in some kind of trouble, would you know about it?” I twisted my neck—if I could I would have tied it in a knot, like the top of a plastic garbage bag. “Eating me!”
“I guess I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She was oddly blasé, sipping her tea and watching me over the top of the cup. I recalled the legends of Zen masters slapping and kicking students to induce sudden realizations. Perhaps that practice was common here in the Zendo, and so she’d inured herself to outbursts, abrupt outlandish gestures.
“Forget it,” I said. “Listen: Have you had any visitors lately?” I was thinking of Tony, who’d ostensibly called on the Zendo after our conference at L&L. “Anyone come sniffing around here last night?”
She only looked puzzled, and faintly annoyed. “No.”
I considered pushing it, describing Tony to her, then decided he must have visited unseen, at least by Kimmery. Instead I asked, “Is there anybody in the building right now?”
“Well, Roshi lives on the top floor.”
“He’s up there now?” I said, startled.
“Sure. He’s in sesshin—it’s like an extended retreat—because of these monks. He took a vow of silence, so it’s been a little quiet around here.”
“Do you live here?”
“No. I’m cleaning up for morning zazen. The other students will show up in an hour. They’re out doing work service now. That’s how the Zendo can afford to pay the rent here. Wallace is downstairs already, but that’s basically it.”
“Wallace?” I was distracted by the tea leaves in my cup settling gradually into a mound at the bottom, like astronauts on a planet with barely any gravity.
“He’s like this old hippie who hardly ever does anything but sit. I think his legs must be made of plastic or something. We went past him on the way up.”
“Where? In the room with the mats?”
“Uh-huh. He’s like a piece of furniture, easy to miss.”
“Biggish, you mean?”
“Not so big. I meant still, he sits still.” She whispered, “I always wonder if he’s dead.”
“But he’s not a really big person.”
“You wouldn’t say that.”
I plunged two fingers into my cup, needing to unsettle the floating leaves again, force them to resume their dance. If the girl saw me do it she didn’t say anything.
“You haven’t seen any really big people lately, have you?” Though I’d not encountered them yet, Roshi and Wallace seemed both unpromising suspects to be the Polish giant. I wondered if instead one might be the sardonic conversationalist I’d heard taunting Minna over the wire.
“Mmmmm, no,” she said.
“Pierogi monster,” I said, then coughed five times for cover. Thoughts of Minna’s killers had overwhelmed the girl’s calming influence—my brain sizzled with language, my body with gestures.
In reply she only refilled my cup, then moved the pot to the countertop. While her back was turned I stroked her chair, ran my palm over the warmth where she’d been sitting, played the spokes of the chair’s back like a noiseless harp.
“Lionel? Is that your name?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t seem very calm, Lionel.” She’d pivoted, almost catching my chair-molestation, and now she leaned back against the counter instead of retaking her seat.
I didn’t ordinarily hesitate to reveal my syndrome, but something in me fought it now. “Do you have something to eat?” I said. Perhaps calories would restore my equilibrium.
“Um, I don’t know,” she said. “You want some bread or something? There might be some yogurt left.”
“Because this tea is corked with caffeine. It only looks harmless. Do you drink this stuff all the time?”
“Well, it’s sort of traditional.”
“Is that part of the Zen thing, getting punchy so you can see God?
Isn’t that cheating?”
“It’s more just to stay awake. Because we don’t really have God in Zen Buddhism.” She turned away from me and began rifling through the cabinets, but didn’t quit her musings. “We just sit and try not to fall asleep, so I guess in a way staying awake is seeing God, sort of. So you’re right.”
The little triumph didn’t thrill me. I was feeling trapped, with the wizened teacher a floor above me and the plastic-legged hippie a floor below. I wanted to get out of the Zendo now, but I hadn’t figured a next move.
And when I left I wanted to take Kimmery with me. I wanted to protect her—the impulse surged in me, looking to affix to a suitable target. Now that I’d failed Minna, who deserved my protection? Was it Tony? Was it Julia? I wished that Frank would whisper a clue in my ear from the beyond. In the meantime, Kimmery would do.
“Here, do you want some Oreos?”
“Sure,” I said distractedly. “Buddhists eat Oreos?”
“We eat anything we want, Lionel. This isn’t Japan.” She took a blue carton of cookies and put it on the table.
I helped myself, craving the snack, glad we weren’t in Japan.
“I used to know this guy who once worked for Nabisco,” she said, musing as she bit into a cookie. “You know, the company that makes Oreos? He said they had two main plants for making Oreos, in different parts of the country. Two head bakers, you know, different quality control.”
“Uh—” I took a cookie and dunked it in my tea.
“And he used to swear he could tell the difference just by tasting them. This guy, when we ate Oreos, he would just go through the pack sniffing them and tasting the chocolate part and then he’d put the bad ones in a pile. And like, a really good package was one where less than a third had to go in the bad pile, because they were from the wrong bakery, you know? But sometimes there wouldn’t be more than five or six good ones in a whole package.”
“Wait a minute. You’re saying every package of Oreos has cookies from both bakeries?”
“Uh-huh.”
I tried to keep from thinking about it, tried to keep it in the blind spot of my obsessiveness, the way I would flinch my eyes fro a tempting shoulder. But it was impossible. “What motive could they possibly have for mixing batches in the same package?”
“Well, easy. If word got out that one bakery was better than the other, they wouldn’t want people, you know, shunning whole cartons, or maybe even whole truckloads, whole deliveries of Oreos. They’d have to keep them mixed up, so you’d buy any package knowing you’d probably get some good ones.”
“So you’re saying they ship batches from the two bakeries to one central boxing location just to mix them together.”
“I guess that’s what it would entail, isn’t it?” she said brightly.
“That’s stupid,” I said, but it was only the sound of my crumbling resistance.
She shrugged. “All I know is we’d eat them and he’d be frantically building this pile of rejected cookies. And he’d be pushing them at me saying, ‘See, see?’ I could never tell the difference.”
No, no, no, no.
Eatmeoreo, I mouthed inaudibly. I crinkled in the cellophane sleeve for another cookie, then nibbled off the overhang of chocolate top. I let the pulverized crumbs saturate my tongue, then reached for another, performed the same operation. They were identical. I put both nibbled cookies in the same pile. I needed to find a good one, or a bad one, before I could tell the difference.
Maybe I’d only ever eaten bad ones.
“I thought you didn’t believe me,” said Kimmery.
“Mushytest,” I mumbled, my lips pasty with cookie mud, my eyes wild as I considered the task my brain had set for my sorry tongue. There were three sleeves in the box of Oreos. We were into just the first of them.
She nodded at my pile of discards. “What are those, good ones or bad ones?”
“I don’t know.” I tried sniffing the next. “Was this guy your boyfriend or something?”
“For a little while.” “Was he a Zen Buddhist too?”
She snorted lightly. I nibbled another cookie and began to despair. I would have been happy now for an ordinary interruptive tic, something to throw my bloodhoundlike obsessions off the scent. The Minna Men were in shambles, yes, but I’d get to the bottom of the Oreo conundrum.
I jumped to my feet, rattling both our teacups. I had to get out of there, quell my panic, restart my investigation, put some distance between myself and the cookies.
“Barnamum Bakery!” I yelped, reassuring myself.
“What?”
“Nothing.” I jerked my head sideways, then turned it slowly, as if to work out a kink. “We’d better go, Kimmery.”
“Go where?” She leaned forward, her pupils big and trusting. I felt a thrill at being taken so seriously. This making the rounds without Gilbert could get to be a habit. For once I was playing lead detective instead of comic—or Tourettic—relief.
“Downstairs,” I said, at a loss for a better answer.
“Okay,” she said, whispering conspiratorially. “But be quiet.”
We crept past the half-open door on the second landing, and I retrieved my shoes from the rack. This time I got a look at Wallace. He sat with his back to us, limp blond hair tucked behind his ears and giving way to a bald spot. He wore a sweater and sweatpants and sat still as advertised, inert, asleep, or, I suppose, dead—though death was not a still thing to me at the moment, more a matter of skid marks in blood and the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Wallace looked harmless anyway. Kimmery’s idea of a hippie, apparently, was a white man over forty-five not in a business suit. In Brooklyn we would have just said loser.
She opened the front door of the Zendo. “I’ve got to finish cleaning,” she said. “You know, for the monks.”
“Importantmonks,” I said, ticcing gently.
“Yes.”
“I don’t think you should be alone here.” I looked up and down the block to see if anyone was watching us. My neck prickled, alert to wind and fear. The Upper East Siders had retaken their streets, and walked obliviously crinkling doggie-doo bags and the New York Times and the wax paper around bagels. My feeling of advantage, of beginning my investigation while the world was still asleep, was gone.
“I’m con-worried,” I said, Tourette’s mangling my speech again. I wanted to get away from her before I shouted, barked, or ran my fingers around the neck of her T-shirt.
She smiled. “What’s that—like confused and worried?”
I nodded. It was close enough.
“I’ll be okay. Don’t be conworried.” She spoke calmly, and it calmed me. “You’ll come back later, right? To sit?”
“Absolutely.”
“Okay.” She craned up on her toes and kissed my cheek. Startled, I couldn’t move, stood instead feeling her kiss-print burning on my flesh in the cold morning air. Was it personal, or some sort of fuzzy Zen coercion? Were they that desperate to fill mats at the Zendo?
“Don’t do that,” I said. “You just met me. This is New York.”
“Yes, but you’re my friend now.”
“I have to go.”
“Okay,” she said. “Zazen is at four oclock.”
“I’ll be there.”
She shut the door. I was alone on the street again, my investigation already at a standstill. Had I learned anything inside the Zendo? Now I felt dazed with loss—I’d penetrated the citadel and spent my whole time contemplating Kimmery and Oreos. My mouth was full of cocoa, my nostrils full of her scent from the unexpected kiss.
Two men took me by the elbows and hustled me into a car waiting at the curb.
The four of them wore identical blue suits with black piping on the legs, and identical black sunglasses. They looked like a band that plays at weddings. Four white guys, assortedly chunky, pinched in the face, with pimples, and indistinct. Their car was a rental. Chunky sat in the backseat waiting and when the two who’d picked me up crushed me into the back beside him, he immediately put his arm around my neck in a sort of brotherly choke hold. The two who’d picked me off the street—Pimples and Indistinct—jammed in beside me, to make four of us on the backseat. It was a bit crowded.
“Get in the front,” said Chunky, the one holding my neck.
“Me?” I said.
“Shut up. Larry, get out. There’s too many. Go in the front.”
“Okay, okay,” said the one on the end, Indistinct or Larry. He got out of the back and into the empty front passenger seat and the one driving—Pinched—took off. Chunky loosened his hold when we got into the downtown traffic on Second Avenue, but left his arm draped over my shoulders.
“Take the Drive,” he said.
“What?”
“Tell him take the East Side Drive.”
“Where are we going?”
“I want to be on the highway.”
“Why not just drive in circles?”
“My car is parked up here,” I said. “You could drop me off. ”
“Shut up. Why can’t we just drive in circles?”
“You shut up. It should look like we’re going somewhere, stupid. We’re really scaring him going in circles.”
“I’m listening to what you say no matter how you drive,” I said, wanting to make them feel better. “There’s four of you and one of me.”
“We want more than listening,” said Chunky. “We want you scared.”
But I wasn’t scared. It was eight-thirty in the morning, and we were fighting traffic on Second Avenue. There weren’t even any co go in, just honking delivery trucks tied up by pedestrians. And the closer I looked at these guys the less I was impressed. For one thing, Chunky’s hand on my neck was soft, his skin was soft, and his hold on me rather tender. And he was the toughest of the bunch. They weren’t calm, they weren’t good at what they were doing, and they weren’t tough. None of them, as far as I could tell, was wearing a gun.
For another thing, all four of their sunglasses still bore price tags, dangling fluorescent orange ovals reading $6.99!
I reached out and batted at Pimples’s price tag. He turned away, and my finger hooked the earpiece and jerked the shades off his face, into his lap. “Shit,” said Pimples, and hurried the glasses back onto his face as if I might recognize him without them.
“Hey, none of that,” said Chunky, and hugged me again. He reminded me of my long-ago kissing tic, the way he was crowding me close to him in the car.
“Okay,” I said, though I knew it would be hard not to bat at the price tags if they came within reach. “But what’s the game here, guys?”
“We’re supposed to throw a scare into you,” said Chunky, distracted, watching Pinched drive. “Stay away from the Zendo, that sort of thing. Hey, take the fucking Drive. Seventy-ninth Street there’s an on-ramp.”
“I can’t get over,” complained Pinched, eyeing lanes of traffic.
“What so great about the FDR?” said Indistinct. “Why can’t we stay on the streets?”
“What, you want to pull over and rough him up on Park Avenue?” said Chunky.
“Maybe just a scare without the roughing-up will do,” I suggested. “Get this over with, get on with the day.”
“Stop him talking so much.”
“Yeah, but he’s got a point.”
“Eatmepointman!”
Chunky clamped his hand over my mouth. At that moment I heard a high-pitched two-note signal. The four of them, and me, began looking around the car for the source of the noise. It was as if we were in a video game and had crossed up to the next level, were about to be destroyed by aliens we couldn’t see coming. Then I realized that the beeping issued from my coat pocket: Minna’s beeper going off.
“What’s that?”
I twisted my head free. Chunky didn’t fight me. “Barnamum Beeper,” I said.
“What’s that, some special kind? Get it out of his pocket. Didn’t you chumps frisk him?”
“Screw you.”
“Jesus.”
They puttheir hands on me and quickly found the beeper. The digital readout showed a Brooklyn-Queens-Bronx prefix on the number. “Who’s that?” said Pimples.
I frowned and shrugged: didn’t know. Truly, I didn’t recognize the number. Someone who thought Minna was still alive, I guessed, and shuddered a little. That scared me more than my abductors did.
“Make him call it,” said Pinched from the front.
“You want to pull over to let him call?”
Indistinct turned in his seat and offered me a cell phone.
“Call the number.”
I dialed, they waited. We inched down Second Avenue. The airspace of the car hummed with tension. The cell phone rang, dit-dit-dit, a miniature, a toy that effortlessly commanded our focus, our complete attention. I might have popped it in my mouth and gulped it down instead of holding it to my ear. Dit-dit-dit, it rang again, then somebody picked up.
Garbage Cop.
“Lionel?” said Loomis.
“Mmmmhuh,” I replied, squelching an outburst.
“Get this. What’s the difference between three hundred sixty-five blow jobs and a radial tire?”
“Don’tcare!” I shouted. The four in the car all jumped.
“One’s a Goodyear, the other’s a great year,” said Loomis proudly. He knew he’d nailed the riddle, no faltering this time, not a word out of place.
“Where are you calling from?” I asked. “You called me.”
“You beeped me, Loomis. Where are you?”
“I don’t know”—his voice dimmed—“hey, what’s the name of this place? Oh, yeah? Thanks. Bee-Bee-Que? Really, just like that, three letters? Go figure. Lionel, you there?”
“Here.”
“It’s a diner called B-B-Q, just like barbecue, only three letters. I eat here all the time, and I never even knew that!”
“Why’d you beep me, Loomis?” Beep and Rebeep are sitting on a fence—
“You told me to. You wanted that address, right? Ullman, the dead guy.”
“Uh, that’s right,” I said, shrugging at Chunky, who still held my neck, but lightly, leaving me room to place the phone. He scowled at me, but it wasn’t my fault if he was confused. I was confused, too. Confused and conworried.
“Well, I got it right here,” said the Garbage Cop pridefully.
“What’s the good of driving him around watching him make a phone call?” complained Pimples.
“Take it away from him,” said Pinched from the driver’s seat.
“Just punch him in the stomach,” said Indistinct. “Make him scared.”
“You got someone there with you?” said Loomis.
The four in the car had begun to chafe at seeing their faint authority slip away, devolve to the modern technology, the bit of plastic and wire in my palm. I had to find a way to calm them down. I nodded and widened my eyes to show my cooperation, and mouthed a just-wait signal to them, hoping they’d recall the protocol from crime movies: pretend they weren’t there listening, and thus gather information on the sly.
I couldn’t help it that they weren’t actually listening.
“Tell me the address,” I said.
“Okay, here goes,” said Loomis. “Got a pen?”
“Whose address?” whispered Chunky in my other ear. He’d caught my hint. He was schooled enough in the clichés to be manipulable; his compatriots I wasn’t so sure of.
“Tell me Ullman’s address,” I said for their sake. Man-Salad-Dress went my brain. I swallowed hard to keep it from crossing the threshold.
“Yeah, I got it,” said the Garbage Cop sarcastically. “Whose else would you want?”
“Ullman?” said Chunky, not to me but to Pimples. “He’s talking about Ullman?”
“Whose! A! Dress!” I shrieked.
“Aw, quit,” said Loomis, jaded by now. My other audience wasn’t so blasé. Pimples ripped the cell phone out of my hand, and Chunky wrestled my arm behind my back so I was wrenched forward nearly against the back of the driver’s seat, and down. It was like he wanted me draped in his lap for a spanking. Meanwhile, up front, Pinched and Indistinct began arguing fiercely about parking, about whether they’d fit in some spot.
Pimples put the phone to his own ear and listened, but Loomis hung up, or maybe just got quiet and listened back, so they were silent together. Pinched managed to park, or double-park—I couldn’t tell which from my strained vantage. The two up front were still muttering at one another, but Chunky was quiet, just turning my arm another degree or two, experimenting with actually hurting me, trying it on for size.
“You don’t like hearing the name Ullman,” I said, wincing.
“Ullman was a friend,” said Chunky.
“Don’t let him talk about Ullman,” said Pinched.
“This is stupid,” said Indistinct, with consummate disgust.
“You’re stupid,” said Chunky. “We’re supposed to scare a guy, let’s do it.”
“I’m not so scared,” I said. “You guys seem more scared to me. Scared of talking about Ullman.”
“Yeah, well, if we’re scared you don’t know why,” said Chunky. “And don’t guess either. Don’t open your trap.”
“You’re scared of a big Polish guy,” I said.
“This is stupid,” said Indistinct again. He sounded like he might cry. He got out of the car and slammed the door behind him.
Pimples finally quit listening to the silence Loomis had left behind on the cell phone, shut it down, and put it on the seat between us.
“What if we are scared of him?” said Chunky. “We ought to be, take it from us. We wouldn’t be working for him if we weren’t.” He loosened his grip on my arm, so I was able to straighten up and look around. We were parked outside a popular coffee shop on Second. The window was full of sullen kids flirting by working on tiny computers and reading magazines. They didn’t notice us, carful of lugs, and why should they?
Indistinct was nowhere to be seen.
“I sympathize,” I said, to keep them talking. “I’m scared of the big guy, too. It’s just you can’t throw a scare so good when you’re scared.”
I thought of Tony. If he’d come to the Zendo last night shouldn’t he have triggered the same alarm I had? Shouldn’t he have drawn these would-be toughs, this clown car loaded with fresh graduates from Clown College?
“What’s so not scary about us?” said Pinched. He said to Chunky, “Hurt him already.”
“You can hurt me but you still won’t scare me,” I said distractedly. One part of my brain was thinking, Handle with scare, scandal with hair, and so on. Another part was puzzling over the Tony question.
“Who was that on the phone?” said Pimples, still working on the problem he’d selected as his own.
“You wouldn’t believe me,” I said.
“Try us,” said Chunky, twisting my arm.
“Just a guy doing research for me, that’s all. I wanted Ullman’s address. My partner got arrested for the murder.”
“See, you shouldn’t have a guy doing research,” said Chunky. “That’s the whole problem. Getting involved, visiting Ullman’s apartment, that’s the kind of thing we’re supposed to scare you about.x201D;
Scare me, skullman, sang my disease. Skullamum Bailey. Skinnyman Brainy.
“Hurt him and scare him and let’s get out of here,” said Pinched. “I don’t like this. Larry was right, it is stupid. I don’t care about who’s doing research.”
“I still want to know who was on the phone,” said Pimples.
“Listen,” said Chunky, now trying to reason with me, as his gang’s morale and focus—and actual numbers—were dwindling. “We’re here on behalf of the big guy you’re talking about, see? That’s who sent us.” He offered the morphic resonance theory: “So if he scares you you ought to be scared by us, without us having to hurt you.”
“Guys like you could kill me and you still wouldn’t scare me,” I said.
“This was a bad idea,” concluded Pinched, and he, too, got out of the car. The front seats were empty now, the steering wheel unmanned. “This isn’t us,” he said, leaning back in, addressing Pimples and Chunky. “We’re no good at this.” He raised his eyebrows at me. “You’ll have to forgive us. This isn’t what we do. We’re men of peace.” He shut the door. I turned my head enough to see him scooting down the block, his walk like a hectic bird’s.
“Scaredycop!” I shouted.
“Where?” said Chunky, immediately releasing my arm. They both swiveled their heads in a panic, eyes wild behind the dark glasses, orange price tags dancing like fishing lures. Freed at last, I turned my head too, not searching for anything, of course, instead for the pleasure of aping their movements.
“Screw this,” muttered Pimples.
He and Chunky both fled the rental car, hot on Pinched’s heels, leaving me alone there.
Pinched had taken the car keys, but Indistinct’s cell phone sat abandoned on the seat beside me. I put it in my pocket. Then I leaned over the seat, popped the glove compartment, and found the rental agency’s registration card and receipt. The car was on a six-month lease to the Fujisaki Corporation, 1030 Park Avenue. The zip code, I was pretty sure, put it in the same zone as the Zendo. Which is where I was, as it happened. I rapped on the rental car’s glove compartment door five times, but it wasn’t particularly resonant or satisfying.
On my walk over to 1030 Park I flipped open the cell phone and rang L&L. I’d never made a street call before, and felt quite Captain Kirk–ish.
“L&L,” said a voice, the one I’d hoped to hear.
“Tony, it’s me,” I said. “Essrog.” That was how Minna always started a phone call: Lionel, itߣs Minna. You’re the first name, I’m the last. In other words: You’re the jerk and I’m the jerk’s boss.
“Where are you?” said Tony.
Crossing Lexington at Seventy-sixth Street was the answer. But I didn’t want to tell him.
Why? I wasn’t sure. Anyway, I let a tic do my talking: “Kiss me, scareyman!”
“I got worried about you, Lionel. Danny said you went off with the Garbage Cop on some kind of a mission.”
“Well, sort of.”
“He with you now?”
“Garbage cookie,” I said seriously.
“Why don’t you head back here, Lionel? We ought to talk.”
“I’m investigating a case,” I said. A guess tic eating a vest. “Oh, yeah? Where’s it taking you?”
A well-coiffed man in a blue suit turned off Lexington ahead of me. He had a cell phone pressed to his right ear. I aligned myself behind him and imitated his walk.
“Various places,” I said.
“Name one.”
The harder Tony asked, the less I wanted to say. “I was hoping we could, you know, triangulate a little. Compare data.”
“Give me an example, Lionel.”
“Like did you—Vesticulate! Guessticalot!—did you get anything out of that, uh, Zendo place last night?”
“I’ll tell you about it when I see you. Right now there’s something important, you ought to get back here. What are you, at a pay phone?”
“Vestphone!” I said. “By any chance did a carful of guys try to warn you off?”
“Fuck you talking about?”
“What about the girl I saw go in before Minna? Did you find out about her?” Even as I asked I got the answer to the question I was asking, the real question.
I didn’t trust Tony.
I felt the truth of it in the pause before he replied.
“I learned a few things,” he said. “But at the moment we need to pool our resources, Lionel. You need to get back here. Because we got some problems coming up.”
Now I could hear the bluff in his voice. It was casual, easy. He wasn’t straining particularly. It was only Essrog on the line, after all.
“I know about problems,” Isaid. “Gilbert’s in jail on a murder charge.”
“Well, that’s just one.”
“You weren’t at the Zendo last night,” I said. The man in the blue suit turned onto Park Avenue, still gabbing. I let him go, and stood in a crowd at the corner, waiting for the light to change.
“Maybe you ought to worry about your own fucking self and not me, Lionel,” said Tony. “Where were you last night?”
“I did what I was supposed to do,” I said, wanting to provoke him now. “I told Julia. Actually, she already knew.” I left out the part about the homicide cop.
“That’s interesting. I’ve been sort of wondering where Julia goes off to. I hope you found out.”
Alarms went off. Tony was trying to make his voice casual, but it wasn’t working. “Wondering when? You means she goes out of town a lot?”
“Maybe.”
“Anyway, how’d you know she went anywhere?”
“Fuck you think we do around here, Lionel? We learn things.”
“Yeah, we’re a leading outfit. Gilbert’s in jail, Tony.” My eyes were suddenly full of tears. I knew I should be trying to focus on the Julia problem, but our betrayal of Gilbert felt more immediate.
“I know. He’s safer there. Come in and talk, Lionel.”
I crossed with the crowd but stopped halfway, at the traffic island in the middle of Park Avenue. The thumbnail of garden was marked with a sign that read VALIANT DAFFODIL (N. AMERICA), but the ground was chewed and pocked and vacant, as if someone had just dug up a plot of dead bulbs. I sat on the wooden embankment there and let the crowd pass by, until the light turned red again and the traffic began to whiz past me. A strip of sunshine laced the avenue and warmed me on the bench. Park Avenue’s giant apartment buildings were ornate with shadow in the midmorning light. I was like a castaway on my island there, in a river of orange cabs.
“Where are you, Freakshow?”
“Don’t call me Freakshow,” I said.
“What should I call you—Buttercup?”
“Valiant Daffodil,” I blurted. “Alibi Diffident.”
“Where are you, Daffodil?” said Tony rather sweetly. “Should we come get you?”
“Goodcop, buttercup,” I said, ticcing on through my tears. By calling me Freakshow—Minna’s nickname—Tony had cued my Tourette’s, had cut right through the layers of coping strategies and called out my giddy teenage voice. It should have been a relief to tic freely one who knew me so well. But I didn’t trust him. Minna was dead and I didn’t trust Tony and I didn’t know what it meant.
“Tell me where your little investigation led you,” said Tony.
I looked up at Park Avenue, the monolithic walls of old money stretched out, a furrow of stone.
“I’m in Brooklyn,” I lied. “Eatmegreenpoint.”
“Oh, yeah? What’s in Greenpoint?”
“I’m looking for the—Greenpope!—the guy who killed Minna, the Polish guy. What do you think?”
“Just wandering around looking for him, huh?”
“Hanging out in Polish bars, that sort of thing?”
I barked and clicked my tongue. My agitated jaw jerked against the redial button and a sequence of tones played on the line. The light changed and the cabs crossing Park blared their horns, working through gridlock. Another raft of pedestrians passed over my island and back into the river.
“Doesn’t sound like Greenpoint,” said Tony.
“They’re filming a movie out here. You should see this. They’ve got Greenpoint—Greenphone! Creepycone! Phonyman!—Greenpoint Avenue set up to look like Manhattan. All these fake buildings and cabs and extras dressed up like they’re on Park Avenue or something. So that’s what you’re hearing.”
“Who’s in it?”
“What?”
“Who’s in the movie?”
“Somebody said Mel—Gisspod, Gasspoint, Pissphone—”
“Mel Gibson.”
“Yeah. But I haven’t seen him, just a lot of extras.”
“And they really got fake buildings out there?”
“Did you sleep with Julia, Tony?”
“Why’d you want to go and say that?”
“Did you?”
“Who you trying to protect, Daffodil? Minna’s dead.”
“I want to know.”
“I’ll tell you in person when you get in here already.”
“Dickety Daffodil! Dissident Crocophile! Laughable Chocodopolus!”
“Ah, I heard it all before.”
“Likable lunchphone, veritable spongefist, teenage mutant Zendo lungfish, penis Milhaus Nixon tuning fork.”
“You fucking Tugboat.”
“Good-bye, Tonybailey.”
Ten-thirty Park Avenue was another stone edifice, unremarkable among its neighbors. The oak doors split the difference between magnificence and military sturdiness, tiny windows barred with iron: French Colonial Bomb Shelter. The awning showed just the numerals, no gaudy, pretentious building name like you’d see on Central Park West or in Brooklyn Heights—here nothing remained to be proved, and anonymity was a value greater than charisma. The building had a private loading zone and a subtle curb cut, though, which sang of money, payoffs to city officials, and of women’s-shoe heels too fragile to tangle with the usual four-inch step, too expensive to risk miring in dog shit. A special curb man stood patrolling the front, ready to open car doors or kick dogs or turn away unwanted visitors before they even tarnished the lobby. I came down the block at a good clip and swiveled to the door at the last minute, faking him out.
The lobby was wide and dark, designed to blind an unfamiliar visitor coming in from the sunlight. A crowd of doormen in white gloves and familiar blue suits with black piping on the legs surrounded me the minute I stumbled through the doors. It was the same uniform worn by the lugs in the rental car.
So they hadn’t been lugs by training—that much was obvious. They were doormen, no shame in that. But men of peace?
“Help you with something?”
“Help you sir?”
“Name?”
“All visitors must be announced.”
“Delivery?”
“Have you got a name?”
They encircled me, five or six them, not on special assignment but instead doing exactly what they were trained to do. Loom in the gloom. In their white gloves and their right context they were much scarier than they had been loaded into a rental car and fumbling as hoods. Their propriety was terrifying. I didn’t see Pinched, Pimples, Chunky or Indistinct among them, but it was a big building. Instead I’d drawn Shadowface, Shadowface, Shadowface, Tallshadowface, and Shadowface.
“I’m here to see Fujisaki,” I said. “Man, woman or corporation.”
“There must be a mistake.”
“Wrong building, surely.”
“There is no Fujisaki.”
“Name?”
“Fujisaki Management Corporation1D; I said.
“No.”
“No. Not here. That isn’t right.”
“No.”
“Name? Who’s calling, sir?”
I took out one of Minna’s cards. “Frank Minna,” I said. The name came easily, and I didn’t feel any need to distort it the way I would my own.
The band of doormen around me loosened at the sight of a business card. I’d shown a first glimmer of legitimacy. They were a top grade of doorman, finely tuned, factoring vigilance against hair-trigger sycophantic instincts.
“Expected?”
“Sorry?”
“Expected by the party in question? Appointment? Name? Contact?”
“Dropping in.” “Hmmm.”
“No.”
“No.”
Another minute correction ensued. They bunched closer. Minna’s card disappeared.
“There may be some confusion.”
“Yes.”
“Probably there is.”
“Wrong building completely.”
“Should there be a destination for a message, what would a message be?”
“On the chance that the destination in question is this one. You understand, sir.”
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
“No message,” I said. I tapped the nearest doorman’s suit breast. He darted back, scowling. But they were penguins now. I had to touch them all. I reached for the next, the tallest, tried to high-five his shoulder and just grazed it. The circle loosened around me again as I spun. They might have thought I was staining them with invisible swatches of blacklight paint for future identification or planting electronic bugs or just plain old spreading cooties, from the way they jumped.
“No.”
“Look out.”
“Can’t have this.”
“Can’t have this here.”
“Out.”
Then two of them had me by the elbows, and I was steered out onto the sidewalk.
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I took a stroll around the block, just to glean what I could from the north face of the building. I was shadowed by the curb man, of course, but I didn’t mind. The staff entrance smelled of a private dry-cleaning service, and the disposal bins showed signs of bulk food orders, perhaps an in-house grocery. I wondered if the building housed a private chef, too. I thought about poking my head in to see but the curb man was muttering tensely into a walkie-talkie, and I figured I’d probably better distance myself. I waved good-bye and he waved back involuntarily—everyone’s a little ticcish that way sometimes.
Between bites of hot dog and gulps of papaya juice I dialed the Garbage Cop’s office. The Papaya Czar on Eighty-sixth Street and Third Avenue is my kind of place—bright orange and yellow signs pasted on every available surface screaming, PAPAYA IS GOD’S GREATEST GIFT TO MAN’S HEALTH! OUR FRANKFURTERS ARE THE WORKING MAN’S FILET MIGNON! WE’RE POLITE NEW YORKERS, WE SUPPORT MAYOR GIULIANI! And so on. Papaya Czar’s walls are so layered with language that I find myself immediately calmed inside their doors, as though I’ve stepped into a model interior of my own skull.
I washed down the tangy nubbin of the first dog while the phone rang. Papaya Czar’s product did emulate an expensive steak’s melting-in-your-mouthiness, frankfurters apparently skinless and neither bun nor dog crisped in the cooking, so they slid together into hot-dog cream on the tongue. These virtues could be taken in excess and leave one craving the greater surface tension of a Nathan’s dog, but I was in the mood for the Czar’s today. I had four more laid out in a neat row on the counter where I sat, each with a trim line of yellow mustard for an exclamation—five was still my angel.
As for papaya itself, I might as well be drinking truffula seed nectar or gryphon milk, for all I knew—I’d never encountered the fruit in any form except the Czar’s chalky beverage.
“Sanitation Inspector Loomis,” answered the Garbage Cop.
“Listen, Loomis. I’m working on this Gilbert thing.” I knew I needed to tie it in to his friend’s plight to keep him focused. In fact, Gilbert was now the furthest thing from my mind. “I need you to pull up some information for me.”
“That you, Lionel?”
“Yeah. Listen. Ten-three-oh Park Avenue. Write that down. I need some records on the building, management company, head of the board, whatever you can find out. See if any names you recognize pop up.”
“Recognize from where?”
“From, uh, around the neighborhood.” I was thinking Frank Minna, but I didn’t want to say it. “Oh, one in particular. Fujisaki. It’s Japanese.”
“I don’t know any Fujisaki from around the neighborhood.”
“Just look up the records, Loomis. Call me back when you get something.”
“Call you back where?”
I’d gotten the beeper and the cell phone mixed up. I was collecting other people’s electronics. In fact, I didn’t know the number of the phone I’d borrowed from the doorman in sunglasses. I wondered for the first time who I’d find myself talking to if I answered the incoming calls.
“Forget it,” I said. “You’ve still got Minna’s beeper number?”
“Sure.”
“Use that. I’ll call you.”
“When do we bail out Gilbert?”
“I’m working on it. Listen, Loomis, I’d better go. Get back to me, all right?”
“Sure thing, Lionel. And, buddy?”
“What?”
“Good stature, man,” said Loomis. “You’re holding up great.” “Uh, thanks Loomis.” I ended the call, put the cell phone back into my jacket pocket.
“Kee-rist,” said a man sitting on my right. He was a guy in his forties. He wore a suit. As Minna said more than once, in New York any chucklehead can wear a suit. Satisfied he wasn’t a doorman, I ignored him, worked on dog number three.
“I was in this restaurant in L.A.,” he started. “Great place, million-dollar place. All the food is tall, you know what I mean? Tall food? There’s this couple at a table, both of them talking on fucking cell phones, just like you got there. Two different conversations through the whole meal, yakking all over each other, what Cindy said, get away for the weekend, gotta work on my game, the whole nine yards. You couldn’t hear yourself think over the racket.”
I finished dog three in five evenly spaced bites, licked the mustard off my thumb tip, and picked up number four.
“I thought L.A., fair enough. Chalk it up. You can’t expect any different. So couple months ago I’m trying to impress a client, take him to Balthazar, you know, downtown? Million-dollar place, take it from me. Tall food, gangly food. So what do I see but a couple of bozos at the bar talking on cell phones. My water’s getting hot, but I figure, bar, fair enough, that’s showing decent respect. Adjust my standards, whatever. So we get a table after waiting fifteen fucking minutes, sit down and my client’s phone rings, he takes it out at the table! Guy I was with! Sits there yakking! Ten, fifteen minutes!”
I enjoyed dog four in Zen-like calm and silence, practicing for my coming zazen.
“Never thought I’d see it in here, though. Fucking California, Balthazar, whatever, all these guys with crap in their hair and million-dollar wristwatches like Dick Tracy I guess I gotta adjust my standards to the modern universe but I thought at the very least I could sit here eat a fucking hot dog without listeing to yak yak yak.”
I’d apportioned a fifth of my papaya juice for rinsing down the last dog. Suddenly impatient to leave, I stuffed a wad of napkins in my jacket pocket and took the dog and the drink in hand and headed back out into the bright cold day.
“Fucking people talking to themselves in a public place like they got some kind of illness!”
The beeper went off just as I got to the car. I drew it out for a look: another unfamiliar number in 718. I got into the car and called from the cell phone, ready to be irritated with Loomis.
“DickTracyphone,” I said into the mouthpiece.
“This is Matricardi and Rockaforte,” went a gravelly voice. Rockaforte. Though I’d heard them speak just two or three times in fifteen years, I would have known his voice anywhere.
Through the windshield I viewed Eighty-third Street, midday, November. A couple of women in expensive coats mimed a Manhattan conversation for my benefit, trying to persuade me of their reality. On the line, though, I heard an old man’s breathing, and what I saw through the windshield wasn’t real at all.
I considered that I was answering Minna’s beeper. Did they know he was dead? Would I have to deliver the news to The Clients? I felt my throat constrict, instantly throbbing with fear and language.
“Speak to me,” rasped Rockaforte.
“Larval Pushbug,” I said softly, trying to offer my name. Did The Clients even know it? “Papaya Pissbag.” I was tic-gripped, helpless. “NotMinna,” I said at last. “NotFrank. Frank’sdead.”
“We know, Lionel,” said Rockaforte.
“Who told you?” I whispered, controlling a bark.
“Things don’t escape,” he said. He paused, breathed, went on. “We’re very sorry for you in this time.”
“You found out from Tony?”
“We found out. We find out what we need. We learn.”
But do you kill? I wanted to ask. Do you command a Polish giant?
“We’re concerned for you,” he said. “The information is that you are running, going here and there, unable to sit still. We hear this, and it concerns.”
“What information?”
“And that Julia has left her home in this time of mourning. That nobody knows where she has gone unless it is you.”
“Nojulia, nobody, nobodyknows.”
“You stll suffer. We see this and we suffer as well.”
This was somewhat obscure to me, but I wasn’t going to ask.
“We wish to speak with you, Lionel. Will you come and talk to us?”
“We’re talking now,” I breathed.
“We wish to see you standing before us. It’s important in this time of pain. Come see us, Lionel.”
“Where? New Jersey?” Heart racing, I allowed soothing permutations to course through my brain: Garden state bricko and stuckface garbage face grippo and suckfast garter snake ticc-o and circus. My lips rustled at the phone, nearly giving the words breath.
“We’re in the Brooklyn house,” he said. “Come.”
“Scarface! Cigarfish!”
“What’s got you running, Lionel?”
“Tony. You’ve been talking to Tony. He said I’m running. I’m not running.”
“You sound running.”
“I’m looking for the killer. Tony’s trying to stop me, I think.”
“You have a problem with Tony?”
“I don’t trust him. He’s acting—Stuccotash!—he’s acting strangely.”
“Let me speak,” came a voice in the background of the call. Rockaforte’s voice was replaced with Matricardi’s: higher, more mellifluous, a single-malt whiskey instead of Dewar’s.
“What’s wrong with Tony?” said Matricardi. “You don’t trust him in this matter?”
“I don’t trust him,” I repeated dumbly. I thought about ending the call. Again I consulted my other senses: I was in the sunshine in Manhattan in an L&L vehicle talking on a doorman’s cell phone. I could discard Minna’s beeper, forget about the call, go anywhere. The Clients were like players in a dream. They shouldn’t have been able to touch me with their ancient, ethereal voices. But I couldn’t bring myself to hang up on them.
“Come to us,” said Matricardi. “We’ll talk. Tony doesn’t have to be there.”
“Forgettaphone.”
“You remember our place? Degraw Street. You know where?”
“Of course.”
“Come. Honor us in this time of disappointment and regret. We’ll talk without Tony. What’s wrong we’ll straighten.”
While I considered what to do I used the doormen’s phone again, called information and got the number of the Daily News’ obituary page and bought a notice for Minna. I put in on a credit card of Minna’s to which he’d added my name. He had to pay for his own notice, but I knew he’d have wanted it, considered it fifty bucks well spent. He was always an avid reader of the obituaries, studying them each morning in the L&L office like a tip sheet, a chance for him to pick up or work an angle. The woman on the line did it all by rote, and so did I: billing information, name of deceased, dates, survivors, until we got to the part where I gave out a line or two about who Minna was supposed to have been.
“Beloved something,” said the woman, not unkindly. “It’s usually Beloved something.”
Beloved Father Figure?
“Or something about his contributions to the community,” she suggested.
“Just say detective,” I told her.