Motherless Brooklyn

“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?”

“Larry, you got the phone?”

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.