Motherless Brooklyn (5 page)

“Shut up so I can hear,” I said.

“That’s all I said.”

“What?” I lifted an earphone.

“That’s all I said. Shut up.”

“Okay! Shut up! Drive! Eat me!”

“Fucking freakball.”

The block behind
BRAINUM
was dark and seemingly empty. The few parked cars didn’t include the K-car. The windowless brick warehouse was laced with fire escapes, wrought-iron cages that ran the length of the second floor and ended in a crumpled, unsafe-looking ladder. On the side street a smallish, graffitied Dumpster was tucked halfway into the shadow of double doorway. The doors behind were strapped with long exterior hinges, like a meat locker. One lid of the Dumpster was shut, the other open to allow some fluorescent bulbs sticking up. Street rubbish packed around the wheels made me think it hadn’t moved in a while, so I didn’t worry about the doors behind it. The other entrance was a roll-up gate on a truck-size loading dock, right out on the brightly lit boulevard. I figured I would have heard the gate sing if it had been raised.

The four stacks of the Newtown Creek Sewage Treatment Plant towered at the end of the street, underlit like ancient pylons in a gladiator movie. Fly an inflatable pig over and you’d have the sleeve of
Pink Floyd’s
Animals
album. Beneath its shadow we crept in the Lincoln around all four corners of the block, seeing nothing.

“Damn it,” I said.

“You don’t hear him?”

“Street noise. Hey, hit the horn.”

“Why?”

“Do it.”

I concentrated on the earphones. Coney honked the Lincoln’s horn. Sure enough, it came through.

“Stop the car.” I was in a panic now. I got out onto the sidewalk, slammed the door. “Circle slow,” I said. “Keep an eye on me.”

“What’s the deal, Lionel?”

“He’s here.”

I paced the sidewalk, trying to feel the pulse of the blackened building, to take the measure of the desolate block. It was a place made out of leftover chunks of disappointment, unemployment and regret. I didn’t want to be here, didn’t want Minna to be here. Coney paced me in the Lincoln, staring dumbly out the driver’s window. I listened to the phones until I heard the approach of my own steps. My own heart beating made a polyrhythm, almost as loud. Then I found it. Minna’s wire had been torn from his shirt and lay tangled in a little heap on the curb of the side street, at the other end of the block from the Dumpster. I picked it up and pushed it into my pants pocket, then ripped the headphones off my neck. Feeling the grimness of the street close around me I began to half-run down the sidewalk toward the Dumpster, though I had to stop once and mimic my own retrieval of the wire: hurriedly kneel at the edge of the sidewalk, grab, stuff, remove phantom headphones, feel a duplicate thrill of panic at the discovery, resume jogging. It was cold now. The wind punched me and my nose oozed in response. I wiped it on my sleeve as I came up to the Dumpster.

“You jerks,” Minna moaned from inside.

I touched the rim of the Dumpster and my hand came away wet with blood. I pushed open the second lid, balanced it against the doorway. Minna was curled fetally in the garbage, his arms crossed around his stomach, sleeves covered in red.

“Jesus, Frank.”

“Wanna get me out of here?” He coughed, burbled, rolled his eyes at me. “Wanna give me a hand? I mean, no sooner than the muse strikes. Or possibly you ought to get out your brushes and canvas. I’ve never been in an oil painting.”

“Sorry, Frank.” I reached in just as Coney came up behind me and looked inside.

“Oh, shit,” he said.

“Help me,” I said to Coney. Together we pulled Minna up from the bottom of the Dumpster. Minna stayed curled around his wounded middle. We drew him over the lip and held him, together, out on the dark empty sidewalk, cradling him absurdly, our knees buckled toward one another’s, our shoulders pitched, like he was a giant baby Jesus in a bloody trench coat and we were each one of the Madonna’s tender arms. Minna groaned and chuckled, eyes squeezed shut, as we moved him to the backseat of the Lincoln. His blood made my fingers tacky on the door handle.

“Nearest hospital,” I breathed as we got into the front.

“I don’t know around here,” said Coney, whispering, too.

“Brooklyn Hospital,” said Minna from the b, surprisingly loud. “Take the BQE, straight up McGuinness. Brooklyn Hospital’s right off DeKalb. You boiled cabbageheads.”

We held our breath and stared forward until Coney got us going the right way, then I turned and looked in the back. Minna’s eyes were half open and his unshaven chin was wrinkled like he was thinking hard or sulking or trying not to cry. He saw me looking and winked. I barked twice—“yipke, yipke”—and winked back involuntarily.

“Fuck happened, Frank?” said Coney without taking his eyes off the road. We bumped and rattled over the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway,
rottenest surface in the boroughs. Like the G train, the BQE suffered from low self-esteem, never going into citadel Manhattan, never tasting the glory. And it was choked with forty- or fifty-wheel trucks, day and night.

“I’m dropping my wallet and watch back here,” said Minna, ignoring the question. “And my beeper. Don’t want them stolen at the hospital. Remember they’re back here.”

“Yeah, but what the fuck happened, Frank?”

“Leave you my gun but it’s gone,” said Minna. I watched him shuck off the watch, silver smeared with red.

“They took your gun? Frank, what happened?”

“Knife,” said Minna. “No biggie.”

“You’re gonna be all right?” Coney was asking and willing it at once.

“Oh, yeah. Great.”

“Sorry, Frank.”

“Who?” I said. “Who did this?”

Minna smiled. “You know what I want out of you, Freakshow? Tell me a joke. You got one you been saving, you must.”

Minna and I had been in a joke-telling contest since I was thirteen years old, primarily because he liked to see me try to get through without ticcing. It was rare that I could.

“Let me think,” I said.

“It’ll hurt him if he laughs,” said Coney to me. “Say one he knows already. Or one that ain’t funny.”

“Since when do I laugh?” said Minna. “Let him tell it. Couldn’t hurt worse than your driving.”

“Okay,” I said. “Guy walks into a bar.” I was watching blood pool on the backseat, at the same time trying to keep Minna from tracking my eyes.

“That’s the ticket,” rasped Minna. “Best jokes start the same fucking way, don’t they, Gilbert? The guy, the bar.”

“I guess,” said Coney.

“Funny already,” said Minna. “We’re already in the black here.”

“So guy walks into a bar,” I said again. “With an octopus. Says to the bartender ‘I’ll bet a hundred dollars this octopus can play any instrument in the place.’ ”

“Guy’s got an octopus. You like that, Gilbert?”

“Eh.”

“So the bartender points at the piano in the corner says, ‘Go ahead.’ Guy puts the octopus on the piano stool—
Pianoctamus! Pianoctamum Bailey!
—octopus flips up the lid, plays a few scales, then lays out a little étude on the piano.”

“Getting fancy,” said Minna. “Showing off a little.”

I didn’t ask him to specify, since if I had he’d surely have said he meant me and the octopus both, for the
étude
.

“So guys says ‘Pay up,’ bartender says ‘Wait a minute,’ pulls out a guitar. Guy gives the octopus the guitar, octopus tightens up the E-string, closes its eyes, plays a sweet little fandango on the guitar.” Pressure building up, I tagged Coney on the shoulder six times. He ignored me, driving hard, outracing trucks. “Guy says ‘Pay up,’ bartender says ‘Hold on, I think I’ve got something else around here,’ pulls a clarinet out of the back room. Octopus looks the thing over a couple of times, tightens the reed.”

“He’s milking it,” said Minna, again meaning us both.

“Well, the octopus isn’t good exactly, but he manages to squeak out a few bars on the clarinet. He isn’t going to win any awards, but he plays the thing.
Clarinet Milk! Eat Me!
Guy says ‘Pay up,’ the bartender says ‘Just wait one minute,’ goes in the back rummages around finally comes out with a bagpipes. Plops the bagpipes up on the bar. Guy brings the octopus over, plops the octopus up next to the bagpipes.
Octapipes!
” I paused to measure my wits, not wanting to tic out the punch line. Then I started again, afraid of losing the thread, of losing Minna. His eyes kept closing and opening again and I wanted them open. “Octopus looks the bagpipes over, reaches out lifts one pipe lets it drop. Lifts another lets it drop. Backs up, squints at the bagpipes.
Guy gets nervous, comes over to the bar says to the octopus—
Accupush! Reactapus!
—says to the octopush,
fuckit
, says
gonnafuckit
—says ‘What’s the matter? Can’t you play it?’ And the octopus says ‘Play it? If I can figure out how to get its pajamas off, I’m gonna fuck it!’ ”

Minna’s eyes had been closed through the windup and he didn’t open them now. “You finished?” he said.

I didn’t speak. We circled the ramp off the BQE, onto DeKalb Avenue.

“Where’s the hospital?” said Minna, eyes still shut.

“We’re almost there,” said Coney. “I need help,ȁsaid Minna. “I’m dying back here.”

“You’re not dying,” I said.

“Before we get in the emergency room, you want to tell us who did this to you, Frank?” said Coney. Minna didn’t say anything.

“They stab you in the gut and throw you in the fucking garbage, Frank. You wanna tell us who?”

“Go up the ambulance ramp,” said Minna. “I need help back here. I don’t wanna wait in some goddamn walk-in emergency room. I need immediate help.”

“We can’t drive up the ambulance ramp, Frank.”

“What, you think you need an
E-Z Pass
, you stale meat loaf? Do what I said.”

I gritted my teeth while my brain went,
Guy walks into the ambulance ramp stabs you in the goddamn emergency gut says I need an immediate stab in the garbage in the goddamn walk-in ambulance says just a minute looks in the back says I think I’ve got a stab in the goddamn walk-in immediate ambuloaf ambulamp octoloaf oafulope
.

“Oafulope!”
I screamed, tears in my eyes.

“Yeah,” said Minna, and now he laughed, then moaned. “A whole fucking herd of ’em.”

“Someone ought to put you both out of your misery,” muttered Coney as we hit the ambulance ramp behind Brooklyn Hospital,
driving against the
DO NOT ENTER
signs, wheels squealing around a pitched curve to a spot alongside double swinging doors marked with yellow stencil
EMS ONLY
. Coney stopped. A Rastafarian in the costume of a private security guard was on us right away, tapping at Coney’s window. He had bundled dreadlocks pushing sideways out of his hat, chiba eyes, a stick where a gun should be, and an embroidered patch on his chest indicating his first name, Albert. Like a janitor’s uniform, or a mechanic’s. The jacket was too big for his broomstick frame.

Coney opened the door instead of rolling down the glass.

“Get this car out of here!” said Albert.

“Take a look in the back,” said Coney.

“Don’t care, mon. This for ambulances only. Get back in the car.”

“Tonight we’re an ambulance, Albert,” I said. “Get a stretcher for our friend.”

Minna looked terrible. Drained, literally, and when we got him out of the car you could see what of. The blood smelled like a thunderstorm coming, like ozone. Two college students dressed as doctors in green outfits with rubber-band sleeves took him away from us just inside the doors and laid him onto a rolling steel cart. Minna’s shirt was shreds, his middle a slush of itself, of himself. Coney went out and moved the car to quiet the security guard pulling on his arm while I followed Minna’s stretcher inside, against the weak protestsf the college students. I moved along keeping my eyes on his face and tapping his shoulder intermittently as though we were standing talking, in the Agency office perhaps, or just strolling down Court Street with two slices of pizza. Once they had Minna parked in a semiprivate zone in the emergency room, the students left me alone and concentrated on getting a line for blood into his arm.

His eyes opened. “Where’s Coney?” he said. His voice was like a withered balloon. If you didn’t know its shape when it was full of air it wouldn’t have sounded like anything at all.

“They might not let him back here,” I said. “I’m not supposed to be here myself.”

“Huhhr.”

“Coney—
Eatme, yipke!
—Coney kind of had a point,” I said. “You might want to tell us who, while we’re, you know, waiting around here.”

The students were working on his middle, peeling away cloth with long scissors. I turned my eyes away.

Minna smiled again. “I’ve got one for you,” he said. I leaned in to hear him. “Thought of it in the car. Octopus and Reactopus are sitting on a bench, a fence. Octopus falls off, who’s left?”

“Reactopus,” I said softly. “Frank, who did this?”

“You know that Jewish joke you told me? The one about the Jewish lady goes to Tibet, wants to see the High Lama?”

“Sure.”

“That’s a good one. What’s the name of that lama? You know, at the end, the punch line.”

“You mean Irving?”

“Yeah, right. Irving.” I could barely hear him now. “That’s who.” His eyes closed.

“You’re saying it was someone named—
Dick! Weed!
—Irving who did this to you? Is that the name of the big guy in the car? Irving?”

Minna whispered something that sounded like “remember.” The others in the room were making noise, barking out instructions to one another in their smug, technical dialect.

“Remember what?”

No answer.

“The name Irving? Or something else?”

Minna hadn’t heard me. A nurse pulled open his mouth and he didn’t protest, didn’t move at all. “Excuse me.”

It was a doctor. He was short, olive-skinned, stubbled, Indian or Pakistani, I guessed. He looked into my eyes. “You have to go now.”

“I can’t do that,” I said. I reached out and tagged his shoulder.

He didn’t flinch. “What’s your name?” he asked gently. Now I saw in his worn expression several thousand nights like this one.