Motherless Brooklyn

“Yeah, we’re a leading outfit. Gilbert’s in jail, Tony.” My eyes were suddenly full of tears. I knew I should be trying to focus on the Julia problem, but our betrayal of Gilbert felt more immediate.

“I know. He’s safer there. Come in and talk, Lionel.”

I crossed with the crowd but stopped halfway, at the traffic island in the middle of Park Avenue. The thumbnail of garden was marked with a sign that read VALIANT DAFFODIL (N. AMERICA), but the ground was chewed and pocked and vacant, as if someone had just dug up a plot of dead bulbs. I sat on the wooden embankment there and let the crowd pass by, until the light turned red again and the traffic began to whiz past me. A strip of sunshine laced the avenue and warmed me on the bench. Park Avenue’s giant apartment buildings were ornate with shadow in the midmorning light. I was like a castaway on my island there, in a river of orange cabs.

“Where are you, Freakshow?”

“Don’t call me Freakshow,” I said.

“What should I call you-Buttercup?”

“Valiant Daffodil,” I blurted. “Alibi Diffident.”

“Where are you, Daffodil?” said Tony rather sweetly. “Should we come get you?”

“Goodcop, buttercup,” I said, ticcing on through my tears. By calling me Freakshow-Minna’s nickname-Tony had cued my Tourette’s, had cut right through the layers of coping strategies and called out my giddy teenage voice. It should have been a relief to tic freely one who knew me so well. But I didn’t trust him. Minna was dead and I didn’t trust Tony and I didn’t know what it meant.

“Tell me where your little investigation led you,” said Tony.

I looked up at Park Avenue, the monolithic walls of old money stretched out, a furrow of stone.

“I’m in Brooklyn,” I lied. “Eatmegreenpoint.”

“Oh, yeah? What’s in Greenpoint?”

“I’m looking for the-Greenpope!-the guy who killed Minna, the Polish guy. What do you think?”

“Just wandering around looking for him, huh?”

“Eatmephone!”

“Hanging out in Polish bars, that sort of thing?”

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?”