Motherless Brooklyn (25 page)

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!”