His hands tightened on the wheel. Instead of looking at me, he squinted into the distance. “You were there?”
“I was following a lead.”
“Answer my question. You were there?”
“Sure.”
“Who’d you see?”
“Just a lot of doormen.”
“You discuss this with Matricardi and Rockaforte? Tell me you didn’t, you goddamn motormouth.”
“They talked, I listened.”
“Oh yeah, that’s likely. Fuck.”
Oddly, I found myself wanting to reassure Tony. He and The Clients had drawn me back to Brooklyn and ambushed me in my car, but some old orphans’ solidarity worked against my claustrophobia. Tony scared me, but The Clients scared me more. And now I knew they still scared Tony, too. Whatever deal he’d struck was incomplete.
It was cold in the car, but Tony was sweating.
“Be serious with me now, Lionel. Do they know about the building?”
“I’m always serious. That’s the tragedy of my life.”
“Talk to me, Freakshow.”
“Anybuilding! Nobuilding! Nobody said anything about a building.” I reached for his collar, wanting to straighten it, but he batted my hands away.
“You were in there awhile,” he said. “Don’t fuck with me, Lionel. What was said?”
“They want me to find Julia,” I said, wondering if it was a good idea to mention her name. th think she knows something.” Tony took a gun out from under his arm and pointed it at me.
I’d returned to Brooklyn suspecting Tony of colluding with The Clients, and now—sweet irony!—Tony suspected me of the same thing. It wasn’t that much of a leap. Matricardi and Rockaforte didn’t have any motive for humoring me. If they trusted Tony, they wouldn’t have required him to wait and bag me outside in the car afterward. He would have been hidden inside, behind the proverbial curtain, soaking up the whole conversation.
I had to give The Clients credit. They’d played us like a Farfisa organ.
On the other hand, Tony had a secret from The Clients: the building on Park Avenue. And despite his fears his secret seemed intact. No point of this particular quadrangle had a monopoly on information. Tony knew something they didn’t. I knew something Tony didn’t, didn’t I? I hoped so. And Julia knew something neither Tony nor The Clients knew, or else she knew something Tony didn’t want The Clients to know. Julia, Julia, Julia, I needed to figure out the Julia angle, even if Matricardi and Rockaforte wanted me to.
Or was I outsmarting myself? I knew what Minna would have said.
Wheels within wheels.
I’d never faced Tony at gunpoint before, but at some level I’d been preparing for this moment all my life. It didn’t feel at all unnatural. Rather it was a sort of culmination, the rarefied end point of our long association. Now, if I’d had a gun on him, that would’ve freaked me out.
The gun also served splendidly to concentrate my attention. I felt my ticcishness ease, and a flood of excess language instantly evaporate, like cartoon blemishes in a television commercial. Gunplay: another perfectly useless cure.
Tony didn’t seem all that impressed by the situation. His eyes and mouth were tired. It was only four in the afternoon and we’d been sitting in the parked car too long already. He had questions, urgent, particular, and the gun would help move things along.
“You talk to anyone else about the building?” he asked.
“Who would I talk to?”
“Danny, say. Or Gilbert.”
“I was just up there. I haven’t seen Danny. And Gilbert’s in jail.” I left out the part about the Garbage Cop, and prayed Minna’s beeper didn’t go off anytime soon.
Meanwhile, with his questions Tony was telling me more than I was telling him: Danny and Gilbert weren’t with him in the Park Avenue caper. Yes, this Hardly Boy was still on the case.
“So it’s just you,” Tony said. “You’re the jerk I’ve gotta deal with. You’re Sam Spade.”
“Minna wasn’t your partner. He was your sponsor, Freakshow. He was Jerry Lewis, and you were the thing in the wheelchair.”
“Then why’d he call for me instead of you when he was in trouble yesterday?”
“He was an idiot bringing you up there.”
A shadow strolled past the car, indifferent to our curbside melodrama. This was my second time imperiled in a parked vehicle in the space of three hours. I wondered what goonish spectacles I’d overlooked in my own career as a pavement walker.
“Tell me about Julia, Tony—Tulip Attorney!” The magic curative of being at gunpoint was beginning to fade.
“Shut up a little. I’m thinking.”
“What about Ullman?” I said. As long as he was allowing my questions I might as well ask. “Who was Ullman?—Doofus Allplan!” I wanted to ask about the Fujisaki Corporation, but I figured the extent of what I knew was one of the only things I knew and he didn’t. I needed to preserve that advantage, however minuscule. Besides, I didn’t want to hear what hay my syndrome would make of the word Fujisaki.
Tony made a particularly sour face. “Ullman’s a guy who didn’t figure numbers right. He’s one of a little group of somebodies who tried to make themselves rich. Frank was another one.”
“So you and the Polish killer took him out, huh?”
“That’s so wrong it’s funny.”
“Tell me, Tony.”
“Where would I start?” he said. I heard a note of bitterness, and wondered if I could play on it. Tony likely missed Minna in his way, and missed the Agency, no matter how he’d been corrupted or what poisonous information he knew that I didn’t.
“Be sentimental for a change,” I said. “Make me know you didn’t kill him.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“That was persuasive,” I said. Then I made a sour face like an uptight British butler: “Per-shwoosh-atively!”
“The problem with you, Lionel, is you don’t know anything about how the world really works. Everything you know comes from Frank Minna or a book. I don’t know which is worse.”
“Gangster movies.” I fought to keep the butler-face from reappearing.
“What?”
“I watched a lot of gangster movies, like you. Everything we both know comes from Frank Minna or gangster movies.”
“Frank Minna was two guys,” said Tony. “The one I learned from and the chucklehead who thought you were funny and got himself killed. You only knew the chucklehead.”
Tony held the gun floppily between us, using it to gesture, to signal punctuation. I only hoped he understood how literally it could punctuate. None of us had ever carried guns so far as I knew, apart from Minna. He’d rarely allowed us even to see his. Now I wondered what private teaching had gone on when I wasn’t around, wondered how seriously I should take Tony’s notion of the two Minnas.
“I suppose it was the smart Frank Minna who taught you to wave guns around,” I said. It came out a bit more sarcastic than I’d intended, then I yelled, “Frankensmart!” which pretty much undercut my delivery. Tony really was waving the gun, though. The only thing it never pointed at was himself.
“I’m carrying this for protection. Like I’m protecting you with it right now, by convincing you to shut up and quit asking questions. And stay in Brooklyn.”
“I hope you don’t have to protect me—Protectmebailey! Detectorbaby!—by pulling the trigger.”
“Let’s both hope. Too bad you weren’t clever like Gilbert, to get himself put under police protection for a week or so.”
“Is that the current sentence for murder? A week?”
“Don’t make me laugh. Gilbert didn’t kill anybody.”
“You sound disappointed.”
“I’m long over my disappointment that Frank liked to surround himself with a cavalcade of clowns. It was a way of life. I won’t be making the same mistake.”
“No, you’ll think up a whole bunch of new ones.”
“Enough of this. Does every conversa
tion with you have to be the director’s cut? Get out of the car.”
At that moment there came a tap on the window, driver’s side. It was a gun muzzle that tapped. The arm holding the gun extended from behind the trunk of the elm tree. A head poked out too: the homicide detective.
“Gentlemen,” he said. “Do step out of the car—slowly.”
Ambushes within ambushes.
He still had that threadbare, jaded, coffee-isn’t-working-anymore air about him, even in daylight. It didn’t look like he’d gotten out of his suit since the night before. I believed him with a gun better than I did Tony, though. He waved us over to the front of the car and had us spread our legs, to the wonderment of a couple of old ladies, then took away Tony’s gun. He had Tony open his jacket and show the open holster and lift his pant legs to prove there was nothing strapped to his ankles. Then he tried to pat me down and I began to pat him back.
“Goddamn it, Alibi, cut that out.” He was still fond of that nickname he’d invented for me. It made me fond of him.
“I can’t help it,” I said.
“What’s that? A phone? Take it out.”
“It’s a phone.” I showed him.
Tony looked at me strangely, and I just shrugged.
“Get back in the car. Give me the keys first.” Tony handed over the keys and we got back into the front seat. The homicide detective opened the back doors and eased into the seat behind us, training his gun on the backs of our heads.
“Hands on the wheel and the dash, that’s good. Face forward, gentlemen. Don’t look at me. Smile like they’re taking your picture. They will be soon enough.”
“What did we do?” said Tony. “A guy can’t show another guy a gun anymore?”
“Shut up and listen. This is a murder investigation. I’m the investigating officer. I don’t care about your goddamn gun.”
“So give it back.”
“I don’t think so, Mr. Vermonte. You people make me nervous. I found out a few things about this neighborhood in the last twenty-four hours.”
“Mister Gobbledy Gun.”
“Shut up, Alibi.”
Shut up shut up shut up! I kneaded the petrified foam of the Pontiac’s dashboard like a nursing kitten, just trying to keep still and shut up. Someday I’d change my name to Shut Up and save everybody a lot of time.
“I got this case because you jokers brought Frank Minna into Brooklyn Hospital. That’s where he died and that’s in my jurisdiction. I don’t get to work this side of Flatbush Avenue that often, you get me? I don’t know all that much about your neighborhood, but I’m learning, I’m learning.”
“Not so many murders over here, eh, Chief?” said Tony.
“Not so many niggers on this side of Flatbush, that what you’re trying to say?”
“Whoa, slow down,” said Tony. “You’re leading the witness. Isn’t that against the rules?” Tony kept his hands on the steering wheel and grinned into the windshield. I don’t think the homicide cop had really meant to inspire such a smile.
“Okay, Tony,” said the cop, his voice a little husky. I heard him breathing heavily through his nose. I suppose unsheathing his gun had gotten him a bit worked up. I imagined I could feel its muzzle centering first on my ear, then rs
“All I meant was not so many murders—am I right?”
“Yeah, you got the lid clamped down pretty tight around here. No murders and no niggers. Nice clean streets, nothing but old guys carrying around racing forms and tiny pencils. Makes me nervous.”
It was honest of him to admit it. I wondered what Mafia horror stories he’d gathered in his day-old investigation.
“Around here people watch out for each other,” said Tony.
“Yeah, right up until you off each other. What’s the connection between Minna and Ullman, Tony?”
“Who’s Ullman?” said Tony. “I never met the guy.”
That was a Minna-ism: never met the guy.
“Ullman kept the books for a property-management firm in Manhattan,” said the homicide detective. “Until your friend Coney shot him through the skull. Looks like tit for tat to me. I’m impressed with how quick you guys get to work.”
“What’s your name, Officer?” said Tony. “I get to ask that, don’t I?”
“I’m not an officer, Tony. I’m a detective. My name is Lucius Seminole.”
“Luscious? You gotta be kidding me.”
“Lucius. Call me Detective Seminole.”
“What is that, like an Indian name?”
“It’s a Southern name,” said Seminole. “Slave name. Keep laughing, Tony.”
“Detectahole!”
“Alibi, you are not making me happy.”
“Inspectaholic!”
“Don’t kill him, Superfly,” said Tony, grinning broadly. “I know it’s pitiful, but he can’t help himself. Think of it as a free human freak show.”
“Licorice Smellahole!” Not turning my head was driving me crazy: I had to rename what I couldn’t see.
“You a car service or a comedy team?” said Seminole.
“Lionel’s just jealous because you’re asking me all the questions,” said Tony. “He likes to talk.”
“I already heard from Alibi last night. He near about drove me crazy with his talk. Now I’m looking for answers from you, straight man.”
“We’re not a car service,x201D; I said. “We’re a detective agency.” The assertion fought its way out of me, a tic disguised as a common statement.
“Turn around, Alibi. Let’s talk about the lady who ran to Boston—
Mrs. Deadguy.”
“Boston?” said Tony. “We’readetectiveagency,” I ticced again.
“She booked the flight under her own name,” said Seminole. “It’s not the first time either. What’s in Boston?”
“Beats me. She goes up there a lot?”
“Don’t play stupid.”
“It’s news to me,” said Tony. He scowled at me, and I made a dopey face back, stumped. Julia in Boston? I wondered if Seminole had his information straight.
“She was ready to fly,” said Seminole. “Somebody tipped her.”
“She got a call from the hospital,” I said.
“Nope,” said Seminole. “I checked that. Try another one. Maybe your boy Gilbert gave her a call. Maybe Gilbert took out Frank Minna before he took out Ullman. Maybe he and the lady are in this together.”
“That’s crazy,” I said. “Gilbert didn’t kill anybody. We’re detectives.” I finally got Seminole’s attention. “I looked into that rumor,” he said. “None of you carry investigators’ credentials, according to the computer. Just limousine operators’ licenses.”
“We work for Frank Minna,” I said, and heard my own unconcealed nostalgia, my pining. “We assist a detective. We’re, uh, operatives.”
“You do stooge work for a penny-ante hood, according to what I can see. A dead penny-ante hood. You were in the pocket of a guy in the pocket of Alphonso Matricardi and Leonardo Rockaforte, two relatively deep old dudes. Only it appears the pocket got turned inside out.”
Tony winced: These clichés hurt. “We work for the clients that come in,” he said, oddly sincere. For a moment Minna again came alive in Tony’s voice. “We don’t ask questions we shouldn’t, or we wouldn’t have any clients at all. The cops do the same, don’t try to tell me any different.”
“Cops don’t have clients,” said the homicide detective stiffly. I would have liked to see the real Frank Minna handle Seminole.
“What are you, Abraham Jefferson Jackson?” said Tony. “You running for office with that speech? Give me a break.”
I snorted. Despite everything, Tony was cracking me up. I threw in a flourish of my own:
“Abracadabra Jackson!”
The gun, and Seminole’s status as a law-enforcement officer, didn’t matter—he was losing control of this interview. What happened was this: Tony and I, so deeply estranged, had been drawn together by the point of the detective’s gun.
In this post-Minna era we Men were a little panicked and raw at facing one another head on. But triangulated by Seminole we’d rediscovered the kinship that lurked in our old routines. If we couldn’t trust each other, Tony and I were at least reminded we were two of a kind, especially in the eyes of a cop. And Tony, seeing chinks in the detective’s confidence, was turning on him with his old orphan’s savagery. A bully knows the parameters and half-life of a brandished threat—the only thing weaker than a gun so long ignored was no gun at all. The cop had had to arrest us or hurt us or turn us against each other by now, and he hadn’t. Tony would cut him apart with his tongue for the mistake.
In the meantime I considered what Seminole had been saying, and tried to sift the information from his dingbat theories. If Julia didn’t get a call from the hospital how did she know about Minna’s death?
Again I wondered: Was it Julia who missed her Rama-lama-ding-dong? Did she keep it in Boston?
“Listen, you scumbags,” said Seminole. He was compensating desperately for his plummeting authority. “I’d rather tangle with homies doing drive-bys all day than wade into this Italianate mobster shit. Don’t get big-headed, now—I can see you’re just a couple of fools. It’s the wiseguys pulling your strings I’m worried about.”
“Great,” said Tony. “A paranoid cop. Wiseguys pulling strings—you read too many comic books, Cleopatra Jones.”
“Clapperdapper Bailey Johnson!”
“You think I’m stupid,” continued Seminole, on a real tear now. “You think a dumb black cop is going to stumble into your little nest and take it on face value. Car service, detective agency, give me a break. I’m going to push this murder bag just far enough to turn it over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and then I’m going to get my ass out of here for good. Might even take a vacation, sit on the beach and read about you losers in the Metro section.”
Stumble, wade: Seminole’s choice of words betrayed him. He really and truly feared he’d already gotten in further than was good for him. I wanted to find a way to allay his fears, I really did. I sort of liked the homicide detective. But everything out of my mouth sounded vaguely like a racial slur.
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