did the guy behind me, but instead of pressing his brake pedal he used my back bumper to slow his forward momentum. Several decades past the age when I considered cars something worth fighting over, I got out of the driver’s seat calm as could be. Besides, it had only been a hard tap. Unfortunately, the guy who hit me was in his early twenties and in no mood to deal with reality or responsibility.
“Why the fuck you stop so short? What the fuck you-”
I put my palms up. “Whoa. Take it easy.”
“Don’t fucking tell me to take it easy,” he barked, leaning over the nose of his car. “Look at this shit.”
Frankly, I didn’t see what shit he was talking about. Beyond the old dings and dents in my bumper, there didn’t seem to be any fresh damage. His bumper, though pretty well flush to mine, did not appear any the worse for wear.
“I’ll pull up a few feet,” I said, turning toward the front of my car.
He grabbed my arm. “Wait a second, motherfucker. You ain’t running on me.”
He had just taken two big steps over my patience threshold. I yanked my arm toward the point where his thumb and index finger met, easily freeing myself, grabbed my old badge out of my back pocket, and shoved it into his face.
“How’s your eyesight, asshole? Can you seen that well enough?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I-”
“This moment here is when you shut up. Like I said, I’m going to pull up a few feet so we can see if there was any real damage done.”
This time, he didn’t grab me. Even if he was so inclined, he was too busy rubbing his face to make sure my badge hadn’t left a permanent impression. I inched the car forward. When I returned to the back of my car, the other guy was on his knees now rubbing his front bumper instead of his face.
“Everything looks okay,” he said sheepishly. “Why don’t we just forget about this, okay?”
Then he mumbled some other words that seemed to run together. Something funky was going on with my ears. It was just like that day in Joe Spivack’s office. I noticed distinct sounds rising out of the din: a jackhammer, the squeal of truck brakes, a guy begging quarters and cursing people when they said no. Then it all fused together.
“Hey, hey, Officer,” he prodded, gently shaking my arm. “You okay?”
“Yeah, fine,” I said.
“What you staring at? Your eyes look kinda weird. You bang your coconut or something? You sure you don’t want me to call an ambulance?”
“Your license plate,” I mumbled.
“What about it?”
“The Garden State,” I read aloud.
“New Jersey, yeah. So what?”
“NJ. Do me a favor, name some towns in Jersey.”
“Look, Officer, I said I was sorry. There’s no need to fuck with me. I-”
“Do it!” I shouted.
“Paterson, Marlboro, Newark, Trenton, Camden, Cherry Hill, Hoboken, Alp-”
“Hoboken, HNJ. Thanks, buddy.” I shook his hand and gave him a business card. “You ever need a favor, you gimme a call.”
He looked at the card. “I thought you were a cop.”
“I can’t make up my mind.”
I got back in my car and found the parking lot Aaron and I kept reserved spots in.
Aaron tilted his head at me like a confused dog. “It’s your day off. What the hell are you doing here?”
“I have to make a call.”
“You feeling all right, Moe? You came all the way to the Upper West Side on your day off to make a call? Everything okay with you and Katy?”
I took the box that held NYPD detective shield 353 out of my jacket pocket and handed it to my big brother. “I came to talk to you about that, but just at the moment I need to make a call.”
“Don’t let me stop you. You own half the place.”
Instead of continuing to the office, I stopped to look around. Sure, I still came to this store once or twice a month, but in some sense I had moved on. Bordeaux in Brooklyn was my store now. I walked back up front and brushed my fingertips against the five- and ten-dollar bills from our first sales. And mounted just below the bills, a picture of our dad, his tentative smile an impossibly inadequate armor against the pain of his failures.
“He’d be proud, wouldn’t he? Of us, I mean.” I turned to Aaron.
“Of course he would.”
Certainly more proud than he was of my career as a cop. Like Aaron, my dad had disapproved. I always suspected the watch my parents gave me when I graduated the academy was mostly my mother’s doing.
Now Aaron was completely perplexed. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“That’s a popular question today.”
“And what am I supposed to do with this?” He held up the shield.
“Hold on to it while I make that call. I’ll be in the back.”
Judith Resnick was surprised, but not at all displeased to hear my voice. If nothing else, she joked, I deserved a commendation for persistence.
“How would you like some work?” I asked.
“Work’s what we’re here for. Believe it or not, Moe, I don’t sit around here all day just waiting for your calls. What you got?”
“Finally something besides questions. I think I know what HNJ1956 stands for. H is the first letter of the name of a town and the NJ stands for New Jersey. The 1956 is self-explanatory. At least, I hope it is.”
“Now that’s information I can do something with,” she said, brightening. “How’d you figure it out?”
“A license plate.”
“But I thought you said-”
“Judith, it’s a long story not worth telling. Take my word for it.” Then I reminded her about the kid and the bicycle, how that might help narrow the search.
“There’s a lot of towns in New Jersey that start with an H, Moe: Hackensack, Hoboken, Hasbrouck Heights, Ho-ho-kus, Hillside…. Even if I were to charge you rates from ten years ago, it would still cost a lot more than a hundred and fifteen bucks. So where does that leave your theory?”
“There’s a big difference. The woman who paid for the initial search knew what town she was looking for. I don’t.”
“Good point.”
“I can send you a check right now to get the search going and pay the balance when you’re done. Does that work for you?”
“That’s fine, Moe. I’m going to get some of my people started on it immediately.”
“How much of a deposit do you want?”
“To start off, a hundred and fifteen bucks sounds about right.”
I liked Judith. She sounded almost as into this as I did, and all she had was money at stake. I didn’t even have that. All I had was curiosity. I hoped that would be worth something in the end.
There was a knock on the office door.
It was my brother. “You off the phone yet?”
“Yeah, who wants to know?”
“NYPD, Detective Prager,” Aaron burst in, holding up the shield like on TV. “Confess, punk.”
“Or what, you gonna start discussing the relative merits of varietal grapes?”
“Exactly.”
“Okay,” I said, “I did it.”
He sat opposite me. “So, little brother, I guess this means good-bye.” He tossed the shield onto the desk. “It’s not like I thought this day might not come, but shoving that thing in my hand wasn’t exactly the most subtle approach. Why didn’t you just pay a guy to skywrite it over Brooklyn? It would have saved you the trip.”
“Sorry about that. Besides, I haven’t made up my mind yet. Right now, it’s just an offer.”
