Motherless Brooklyn

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?”