Motherless Brooklyn (15 page)

“You mooks ever get learners’ permits?” said Minna.

Nobody had.

“You know where the DMV is, up on Schermerhorn? Here.” He dug out a roll, scrunched off four twenties onto the seat beside Tony, who handed them out. For Minna everything had the same price, was
fixed and paid for by the quick application of twenty dollars. That hadn’t changed. “I’ll drop you up there. First I want you to see something.”

It was a tiny storefront on Bergen, just short of Smith Street, boarded so tightly it looked like a condemned building. But I, for one, was already familiar with the inside of it. A few years earlier it had been a miniature candy store, with a single rack of comics and magazines, run by a withered Hispanic woman who’d pinioned my arm when I slipped a copy of
Heavy Metal
into my jacket and ducked for the door. Now Minna gestured at it grandly: the future home of L&L Car Service.

Minna had an arrangement with a certain Lucas, at Corvairs Driving School, on Livingston Street—we were all to receive lessons, free of charge, beginning tomorrow. The purple Caddy was the only vehicle in L&L’s fleet, but others were on their way. (The car smelled poisonously new, vinyl squeaking like an Indian burn. My probing fingers investigated the backseat armrest ashtray—it contained ten neatly clipped fingernails.) In the meantime we’d be busy getting our licenses and rehabilitating the ruined storefront, fitting it with radios, office equipment, stationery, telephones, tape recorders, microphones (tape recorders? microphones?), a television and a small refrigerator. Minna had money to spend on these things, and he wanted us along to see him spend it. We might look for some suitable clothes while were at it—did we know we looked like rejects from
Welcome Back, Kotter
?—the only thing to do was drop out of Sarah J. immediately. The suggestion didn’t ruffle any feathers. In a blink we’d fallen into formation, Pavlov’s orphans. We listened to Minna’s new tonalities, distrusting and harsh, as they warmed into something like the old, more generous music, the tune we’d missed but not forgotten. He rolled on: We ought to have a CB-radio setup, this was the twentieth fucking century, had we heard? Who knew how to work a CB? Dead silence, punctured by
“Radiobailey!
Fine, said Minna, the Freak volunteers.
Hello? Hello? We almond-studded cheeseballs were staring like we didn’t know English—what exactly
had
we been doing for two years anyway, apart from researching how many times a day we could clean out our fish tanks? Silence. Spank our monkeys, rough up our suspects,
jerk off
, Minna meant—did he have to spell it out? More silence. Hello? Hey, had we ever seen
The Conversation
? Best fucking movie in the world, Gene Hackman. We knew Gene Hackman? Silence again. We knew him only from
Superman
—Lex Luthor. It didn’t seem likely Minna meant
that
Gene Hackman. (
Lexluthor, text-lover, lostbrother
, went my brain, plumbing up trouble—where was Gerard, the other L in L&L? Minna hadn’t said his name.) Well, we ought to see it, learn a thing or two about
surveillance
. Talking all the while, he drove us up to Schermerhorn, to the Department of Motor Vehicles. I saw Danny’s eyes dart to the Sarah J. boys playing basketball in the park across the street—but now we were with Minna, a million miles away. We ought to get limousine-operator’s licenses, he went on. They only cost ten dollars more, the test is the same. Don’t smile for the picture, you’ll look like the Prom Date Killers. Did we have girlfriends? Of course not, who’d want a bunch of jerks from nowhere. By the way, the Old Stove was dead. Carlotta Minna had passed two weeks ago; Minna was just settling her affairs now. We wondered what affairs, didn’t ask. Oh, and Minna had gotten married, he thought to mention now. He and his new wife were moving into Carlotta’s old apartment, after first scouring the thirty-year-old sauce off the walls. We jarheads could meet Minna’s bride if we got ourselves haircuts first. Was she from Brooklyn? Tony wanted to know. Not exactly; she grew up on an
island
. No, you jerks, not Manhattan or Long Island—a real island. We’d meet her. Apparently first we had to be drivers who operated cameras, tape recorders and CB radios, with suits and haircuts, with unsmiling license photos. First we had to become
Minna Men
, though no one had said those words.

But here, here was
the beauty part
. By Minna’s own admission, he’d
buried the lead:
L&L Car Service—it wasn’t really a car service. That was just a front. L&L was a
detective agency
.

The joke Minna wanted to hear in the emergency room, the joke about Irving, went like this:

A Jewish mother—Mrs. Gushman, we’ll call her—walks into a travel agency. “I vant to go to Tibet,” she says. “Listen lady, take my word for it, you don’t want to go to Tibet. I’ve got a nice package tour for the Florida Keys, or maybe Hawaii—” “No,” says Mrs. Gushman, “I vant to go to
Tibet.”
“Lady, are you traveling alone? Tibet is no place—” “Sell me a ticket for Tibet!” shouts Mrs. Gushman. “Okay, okay.” So she goes to Tibet. Gets off the plane, says to the first person she sees, “Who’s the greatest holy man in Tibet?” “Why, that would be the High Lama,” comes the reply. “That’s who I vant to see,” says Mrs. Gushman. “Take me to the High Lama.” “Oh, no, you don’t understand, American Lady, the High Lama lives on top of our highest mountain in total seclusion. No one can see the High Lama.” “I’m Mrs. Gushman, I’ve come all the vay to Tibet, and I must see the High Lama!” “Oh, but you could never—” “Which mountain? How do I get there?” So Mrs. Gushman checks into a hotel at the base of the mountain and hires sherpas to take her to the monastery at the top. All the way up they’re trying to explain to her, nobody sees the High Lama—his own monks have to fast and meditate for years before they’re allowed to ask the High Lama a single question. She just keeps pointing her finger and saying “I’m Mrs. Gushman, take me up the mountain!” When they get to the monastery the sherpas explain to the monks—crazy American lady, wants to see the High Lama. She says, “Tell the High Lama Mrs. Gushman is here to see him.” “You don’t understand, we could never—” “Just tell him!” The monks go and come back and they’re shaking their heads in confusion. “We don’t understand, but the High Lama says he will grant you
an audience. Do you understand what an honor—” “Yes, yes,” she says. “Just take me!” So they lead her in to see the High Lama. The monks are whispering and they open the door and the High Lama nods—they can leave him alone with Mrs. Gushman. And the High Lama looks at Mrs. Gushman and Mrs. Gushman says, “Irving, when are you coming home? Your father’s worried!”

Minna Men wear suits. Minna Men drive cars. Minna Men listen to tapped lines. Minna Men stand behind Minna, hands in their pockets, looking menacing. Minna Men carry money. Minna Men collect money. Minna Men don’t ask questions. Minna Men answer phones. Minna Men pick up packages. Minna Men are clean-shaven. Minna Men follow instructions. Minna Men try to be like Minna, but Minna is dead.

Gilbert and I left the hospital so quickly, and drove back in such a perfect fog of numbness, that when we walked into L&L and Tony said, “Don’t say it. We already heard,” it was as though I were learning myself for the first time.

“Heard from who?” said Gilbert.

“Black cop, through here a few minutes ago, looking for you,” said Tony. “You just missed him.”

Tony and Danny stood furiously smoking cigarettes behind L&L’s counter, their foreheads pasty with sweat, eyes fogged and distant, teeth grinding behind their drawn lips. They looked like somebody had worked them over and they wanted to take it out on us.

The Bergen Street office was as we’d renovated it fifteen years before: divided in two by the Formica counter, thirty-inch color television playing constantly in the “waiting area” on this side of the counter, telephones, file cabinets and computer on the rear wall, underneath a massive laminated map of Brooklyn, Minna’s heavy Magic Marker numerals scrawled across each neighborhood, showing the price of an L&L ride—five bucks to the Heights, seven to Park Slope or Fort Greene, twelve to Williamsburg or Borough Park, seventeen to Bushwick. Airports or Manhattan were twenty and up.

The ashtray on the counter was full of cigarette butts that had been in Minna’s fingers, the telephone log full of his handwriting from earlier in the day. The sandwich on top of the fridge wore his bite marks. We were all four of us an arrangement around a missing centerpiece, as incoherent as a verbless sentence.

“How did they find us?” I said. “We’ve got Frank’s wallet.” I opened it up and took out the bundle of Frank’s business cards and slipped them into my pocket. Then I dropped it on the counter and slapped the Formica five times to finish a six-count.

Nobody minded me except myself. This was my oldest, most jaded audience. Tony shrugged and said, “Him croaking out
L and L
as his dying words? A business card in his coat? Gilbert giving out names like a fucking idiot? You tell
me
how they found us.”

“What did this cop want?” said Gilbert stoically. He would deal with one problem at a time, the plodder, even if they stacked up from here to the moon.

“He said you weren’t supposed to leave the hospital, that’s what he said. You gave some nurse your
name
, Gilbert.”

“Fuck it,” said Coney. “Fuck some fucking black cop.”

“Yeah, well, you can express that sentiment in person, since he’s
coming back. And you might want to say, ‘Fuck some fucking black homicide detective,’ since that’s actually what you’re dealing with here. Smart cop, too. You could see it in his eyes.”

“Fuckicide,” I thought to add.

“Who’s going to tell Julia?” said Danny quietly. His mouth, his whole face, was veiled in smoke. Nobody answered.

“Well, I won’t be here when he comes back,” said Gilbert. “I’ll be out doing his work for him, catching the motherfucker who did this. Gimme a coffin nail.”

“Slow down, Sherlock,” said Tony, handing him a cigarette. “I wanna know how’d it even happen in the first place? How’d the two of you even get involved? I thought you were supposed to be on a stakeout.”

“Frank showed up,” said Gilbert, trying to flick his depleted lighter again and again, failing to make it catch. “He went inside. Fuck. Fuck.” His voice was clenched like a fist. I saw the whole stupid sequence playing behind his eyes: parked car, wire, traffic light, Brainum, the chain of banalities that somehow led to the bloody Dumpster and the hospital. The chain of banalities now immortalized by our guilt.

“Inside
where?”
said Tony, handing Gilbert a book of matches. The phone rang.

“Some kinda kung-fu place,” said Gilbert. “Ask Lionel, he knows all about it—”

“Not kung fu,” I started. “Meditation—”

“You’re trying to say they killed him with
meditation
?” said Tony. The phone rang a second time.

“No, no, we saw who killed him—
Viable Guessfrog!
—a big Polish guy—
Barnamum Pierogi!
—I mean
really
big. We only saw him from behind.”

“Which one of us is going to tell Julia?” said Danny again. The phone rang a third time.

I picked it up and said, “L and L.”

“Need a car at One-eighty-eight Warren, corner of—” droned a female voice.

“No cars,” I said by rote.

“You don’t have any cars?”

“No cars.” I gulped, ticking like a time bomb.

“How soon can you get a car?”

“Lionel Deathclam!”
I shouted into the phone. That got the caller’s attention, enough that she hung up. My fellow Minna Men glanced at me, jarred only slightly from their hard-boiled despair.