Motherless Brooklyn

“We wish to see you standing before us. It’s important in this time of pain. Come see us, Lionel.”

“Where? New Jersey?” Heart racing, I allowed soothing permutations to course through my brain: Garden state bricko and stuckface garbage face grippo and suckfast garter snake ticc-o and circus. My lips rustled at the phone, nearly giving the words breath.

“We’re in the Brooklyn house,” he said. “Come.”

“Scarface! Cigarfish!”

“What’s got you running, Lionel?”

“Tony. You’ve been talking to Tony. He said I’m running. I’m not running.”

“You sound running.”

“I’m looking for the killer. Tony’s trying to stop me, I think.”

“You have a problem with Tony?”

“I don’t trust him. He’s acting-Stuccotash!-he’s acting strangely.”

“Let me speak,” came a voice in the background of the call. Rockaforte’s voice was replaced with Matricardi’s: higher, more mellifluous, a single-malt whiskey instead of Dewar’s.

“What’s wrong with Tony?” said Matricardi. “You don’t trust him in this matter?”

“I don’t trust him,” I repeated dumbly. I thought about ending the call. Again I consulted my other senses: I was in the sunshine in Manhattan in an L &L vehicle talking on a doorman’s cell phone. I could discard Minna’s beeper, forget about the call, go anywhere. The Clients were like players in a dream. They shouldn’t have been able to touch me with their ancient, ethereal voices. But I couldn’t bring myself to hang up on them.

“Come to us,” said Matricardi. “We’ll talk. Tony doesn’t have to be there.”

“Forgettaphone.”

“You remember our place? Degraw Street. You know where?”

“Of course.”

“Come. Honor us in this time of disappointment and regret. We’ll talk without Tony. What’s wrong we’ll straighten.”

While I considered what to do I used the doormen’s phone again, called information and got the number of the Daily News’ obituary page and bought a notice for Minna. I put in on a credit card of Minna’s to which he’d added my name. He had to pay for his own notice, but I knew he’d have wanted it, considered it fifty bucks well spent. He was always an avid reader of the obituaries, studying them each morning in the L &L office like a tip sheet, a chance for him to pick up or work an angle. The woman on the line did it all by rote, and so did I: billing information, name of deceased, dates, survivors, until we got to the part where I gave out a line or two about who Minna was supposed to have been.

“Beloved something,” said the woman, not unkindly. “It’s usually Beloved something.”

Beloved Father Figure?

“Or something about his contributions to the community,” she suggested.

“Just say detective,” I told her.

ONE MIND

There were only and always two things Frank Minna would not discuss in the years following his return from exile and founding of the Minna Agency. The first was the nature of that exile, the circumstances surrounding his disappearance that day in May when his brother Gerard hustled him out of town. We didn’t know why he left, where he went or what he did while he was gone, or why he came back when he did. We didn’t know how he met and married Julia. We didn’t know what happened to Gerard. There was never again any sign or mention of Gerard. The sojourn “upstate” was covered in a haze so complete it was sometimes hard to believe it had lasted three years.

The other was The Clients, though they lurked like a pulse felt here or there in the body of the Agency.