The Brooklyn Rules

'Well …' he seemed impatient. About what, I wasn't sure. He got tired of me trying to figure it out. 'Were ya raised here?'

'Nah. Brooklyn. Coney Island. There was a bar here once, Pooty's. Friend of mine had a share in it. The grout in the tile was dirtier than my mechanic's fingernails, but it had the best jukebox in New York City.'

He was skeptical. 'The fuck, you say. In the whole city?'

'Duke Ellington, the Dead Kennedys, John Lee Hooker, the Beatles, the Clash, Howlin Wolf, the Ramones … Fell in love with my wife here. Took an actress here once when I was on the job.'

He smiled wryly. 'A copper, ya say.'

'Once. You?'

'In a manner of speaking, back in Ireland.'

I was curious, but there was something in his demeanor that warned me not to ask, that I wouldn't like the answer and he wouldn't like giving it.

'What is it you do now other than stand and stare longingly at buildings that housed old pubs?'

I own wine stores with my older brother. 'Private investigator.'

'Fuck on a bike.'

'You too?'

'In a manner of speaking. They don't have a name for it.'

I took him at his word, glad he hadn't asked to see my license. I still kept it in my sock drawer.

'You investigating an author?' He pointed at the nearly forgotten paperback. 'Love books. Only thing's kept me above the dirt this long. Balances out the drink and these.' He waved the cigarette at me, then flicked it in the gutter. Lit another. 'The book,' he prodded.

'Some novel a friend recommended.' I held the cover up for him.

'Bollix. What a load a shite. Author's a real wanker.'

'You know him?'

'In a manner of speaking.' He was nothing if not consistent. 'Don't waste your time with that crap. Read McBain.'

'Can I buy you a drink?'

'Lovely offer, but I'm waiting on someone.'

I held my right hand out to him. 'Moe Prager.'

He took my hand, his grip deceptively strong for such a bony bastard.

'A pleasure,' he said, letting go of my hand. 'Ah, here she comes now.'

I looked over my shoulder to see a very little girl sort of waddling her way toward us. I was never good with age, but she seemed far too young to be walking alone down even the safest of streets in the smallest of towns. There was something odd about her gait, a bouncy sort of looseness in her small strides. It was only when she got closer that I noticed she had Down Syndrome. She looked right past me and raised her small hand up to the root man.

'There you are,' he said to her and softly cradled her hand in his. 'Mind yerself, Moe.'

I watched them disappear around the corner. Even after they disappeared, I could not get them out of my head. Maybe it was that the smell of his cigarettes lingered in my clothes or maybe it was my shock about the girl. But gone they were. Like things, when people are gone, they're gone.

I found a pub a few blocks away, put the paperback down on the bar, ordered a pint of Blue Point Toasted. I had hoped the barman would be an old-timer, someone I could shoot the shit with about how the neighborhood was back in the day. But the barman was a woman no older than my Sarah and her back in the day was like last week.

As I was about to leave, she asked, 'What you reading?'

'Nothing,' I said, sliding the paperback her way, tucking a five spot in as a bookmark.

'TheGuards,' she said. 'I've heard it's great.'

'Yeah, well, if you see a guy in the neighborhood in a cheap blue suit, keep that opinion to yourself.'

The walk back to Montague Street seemed much easier without the weight of the book.

Requiem for Moe

He appeared at the Brooklyn store one day, stepping out of a cloud of his own cigarette smoke: a tattered old genie coming out of the lamp. A genie, mind you, in a cheap blue suit and expensive brown shoes.

'Can't smoke in here,' I said, not recognizing him at first.

'Moe, isn't it?'

'Do I know-'

I stopped myself and squinted through my glasses. While I didn't quite know him, we'd met once, maybe fifteen years before on the streets of Tribeca in front of the building where Pooty's had stood. Pooty's was a scruffy watering hole that had once been home to the best jukebox in the city, the place where I first fell deeply in love with my wife to be. Now Pooty's was gone and my wife to be is my wife that was. The genie was an Irishman, from Galway, as I recalled, an ex-cop like myself and like myself a man who, in younger days, took on the odd private case.

'How are you?' I held my hand out to him.

Ignored it. Too busy crushing his cigarette out on the hundred-and-fifty-year-old broad plank flooring we'd just had restored and resurfaced. His role as fireman complete, he took my hand.

'Ah, it's good to see you, pal.'

'I never did get your name all those years ago.'

'Jack,' he said, as if the single syllable explained the history of the world and then some.

'Just Jack?'

'Why, will it not do?'

Said

'It will have to.'

'Practical man, Moe. We've no use for practical men in Ireland. A country full of priests and poets. Piss on the streets of Galway and you'll catch the next five Yeats with the spray.'

'I'll take your word for it.'

'You'd be the first.'

'So, what can I do for you, Jack? A bottle of Jameson?'

Said

'For fuck's sake, is there like a neon sign on me forehead?'

'No, just guessing.'

'I've given up the drink, Moe.'

'Jack, not to bust your balls, but this is a liquor store.'

'I'm here for you, not for the drink. It's hard for me to confess, but I need your help.'

'Help? How can I help you, Jack?'

'I'm looking for a cat.'

'A cat?'

'Jesus, is there like an echo in here? Don't you still work cases?'

'I'm an old man.'

'Bollix! It's in your blood.'

'At my age the only thing in my blood is blood and thanks to the drug companies it's not even that. Besides, lost pets was never my beat.'

Said

'Not that kind of cat, Moe.'

'What, it escaped from the zoo? Somehow I don't picture a gimpy old Jew and crooked old Irishman chasing tigers through the streets of Brooklyn Heights.'

'Not that kind of cat either.'