Motherless Brooklyn

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.

“Federal Bureau of what?” said Tony. “I never met those guys.”

“Let’s go upstairs and see if Uncle Alphonso and Uncle Leonardo can explain it to you,” said Seminole. “Something tells me they’ve got a working familiarity with the FBI.”

“I don’t think the old guy are home anymore,” said Tony.

“Oh yeah? Where’d they go?”

“They went through a tunnel in the basement,” said Tony. “They had to get back to their hideout, since they’ve got James Bond-or Batman, I can’t remember which-roasting over a slow fire.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Don’t worry, though. Batman always gets away. These supervillains never learn.”

“Uncle Batman!” I shouted. They couldn’t know how much work it was for me to keep my hands on that dashboard, my neck straight. “Unclebailey Blackman! Barnamum Bat-a-potamus!”

“That’s enough, Alibi,” said Seminole. “Get out of the car.”

“What?”

“Get lost, go home. You annoy me, man. Tony and me are going to have a little talk.”

“C’mon, Blacula,” complained Tony. “We’ve been talking for hours. I’ve got nothing to say to you.”

“Every name you call me I think up a couple more questions,” said Seminole. He waved at me with his gun. “Get lost.”

I gaped at Seminole, incredulous.

“I mean it. Get.”

I opened the door. Then I thought to find the Pontiac’s keys and hand them to Tony.

Tony glared at me. “Go back to the office and wait for me.”

“Oh, sure,” I said, and stepped out onto the curb.

“Close the door,” said Seminole, training gun and gaze on Tony.

“Thanks, Count Chocula,” I said, and skipped away, literally.