Motherless Brooklyn

“Yeah, I know a thing. And I’ve met your killing machine. But you saw that, when he dragged me out, downstairs. The kumquat-eater.”

I was desperate to see him flinch, to impress him with the edge I had, the things I’d learned, but Gerard wasn’t ruffled. He raised his eyebrows, which got a lot of play across the empty canvas of his forehead. “You and your friends, what are their names?”

“Who? The Minna Men?”

“Yes-Minna Men. That’s a very good description. My brother was very important to the four of you, wasn’t he?” I nodded, or not, but anyway he went on.

“He really taught you everything, I suppose. You sound just like him when you speak. What an odd life, really. You realize that, don’t you? That Frank was a very odd man, living in a strange and anachronistic way?”

“What’s cartoonistic about it?”

“Anachronistic,” said Gerard patiently. “From another time.”

“I know what it means,” I said. “I mean what’s so akakonistic about it?” I was too wound up to go back and repair the tic-pocked surface of my speech. “Anyway, enactoplasmic as opposed to what? A million-year-old mystical Japanese cult?”

“You wear your ignorance as aggressively as Frank,” said Gerard. “I suppose you’re making my point for me.”

“Point being what?”

“My brother taught you only what he knew, and not even all of that. He kept you charmed and flattered but also in the dark, so your sense of even his small world was diminished, two-dimensional. Cartoonistic, if you like. What’s astonishing to me is that you didn’t know about the Park Avenue building until just now. It really must come as a shock.”

“Enlighten me.”

“Surely you’ve got my brother’s money in your pocket even as we speak, Lionel. Do you really believe that it came from detective work, from those scuffling little assignments he contrived to keep you children busy? Or perhaps you imagine he speech.pped money. That’s just as likely.”

Was crapped a chink in Gerard’s Zen façade, a bit of Brooklyn showing through? I recalled the elder monk proclaiming the worthlessness of “Bowel Movement Zen.”

“Frank consorted with dangerous people,” Gerard went on. “And he stole from them. The remuneration and the risk were high. The odds that he would flourish in such a life forever, low.”

“Talk to me about fool-me-softly-Fujisaki.”

“They own the building. Minna had a hand in managing it. The money involved would dazzle your senses, Lionel.” He gave me an expectant look, as though this assertion ought to dazzle me in the money’s stead, ought to astonish me right out of my investigation, and his bedroom.

“These people, their other home is an island,” I said, quoting the Garbage Cop-not that the phrase was likely to have originated with him.

Gerard smiled at me oddly. “For every Buddhist, Japan is his other home. And yes, it is an island.”

“Who’s a Buddhist?” I said. “I was talking about the money.”

He sighed, without losing the smile. “You are so like Frank.”

“What’s your role, Gerard?” I wanted to sicken him the way I was sickened. “I mean, besides sending your brother out into the Polack’s arms to die.”

Now he beamed munificently. The worse I attacked him, the deeper his forgiveness and grace would be-that’s what the smile said. “Frank was very careful never to expose me to any danger if he could help it. I was never introduced to anyone from Fujisaki. I believe I have yet to make their acquaintance, apart from the large hit man you led here yesterday.”

“Who’s Ullman?”

“A bookkeeper, another New Yorker. He was Frank’s partner in fleecing the Japanese.”

“But you never met the guy.”

I meant him to hear the sarcasm, or rather Frank Minna’s sarcasm in quotation. But he went on obliviously. “No. I only supplied the labor, in return for consideration equal to my mortgage here on the Zendo. Buddhism is spread by what means it finds.”

“Labor for what?” My brain tangled on spread by means it finds, fed in springs by mimes, bled by mingy spies, but I shook it off.

“My students performed the maintenance and service work for the building, as part of their training. Cleaning, cooking, the very sort of labor they’d perform in a monastery, only in a slightly different setting. The contract for those services in such a building is worth millions. My brother and Ullman tithed the difference mostly into their own pockets.”

“Yes. Doormen, too.”

“So Fujisaki sicced the giant on Frank and the bookkeeper.”

“I suppose that’s right.”

“And he just happened to use the Zendo as his trap yesterday?” I aired out another Minna-ism: “Don’t try to hand me no two-ton feather.” I was dredging up Minna’s usages on any excuse now, as though I could build a golem of his language, then bring it to life, a figure of vengeance to search out the killer or killers.