Motherless Brooklyn

By the time Minna returned Gilbert and I were about to graduate-no great feat, mostly a matter of showing up, staying awake, and, in Gilbert’s case, of systematically recopying my completed homework in his own hand. Tony had completely stopped showing his face at Sarah J. and Danny was somewhere in between-a presence in the yard and the gym, and in the culture of the school, he’d skipped most of his third-year classes and was being “held back,” though the concept was a bit abstract to him, I think. You could have told him he was being returned to kindergarten and he would have shrugged, only asked how high the hoops were placed in the yard, whether the rims could hold his weight.

Minna had Tony in the car already when he drove up outside the school. Gilbert went to the yard to pull Danny out of a three-on-three while I stood on the curb, motionless in the rush of students out of the building, briefly struck dumb. Minna got out of the car, a new Cadillac, bruise-purple. I was taller than Minna now, but that didn’t lessen his sway over me, the way his presence automatically begged the question of who I was, where’d I come from, and what kind of man or freak I was turning out to be. It had everything to do with the way, five years before, I’d begun discovering myself upon Minna’s jerking me out of the library and into the world, and with the way his voice had primed the pump for mine. My symptoms loved him. I reached for him-though it was May, he was wearing a trench coat-and tapped his shoulder, once, twice, let my hand fall, then raised it again and let fly a staccato burst of Tourettic caresses. Minna still hadn’t spoken.

“Eatme, Minnaweed,” I said under my breath.

“You’re a laugh and a half, Freakshow,” said Minna, his face completely grim.

Soon enough I would understand that the Minna who’d returned was not the same as the one who’d left. He’d shed his old jocularity like baby fat. He no longer saw drolleries everywhere, had lost his taste for the spectrum of human cmedy. The gate of his attention was narrowed, and what came through it now was pointed and bitter. His affections were more glancing, his laugh just a wince. He was quicker to show the spur of his impatience, too, demanded less tell your story, more walking.

But at that moment his austerity seemed utterly particular: He wanted us all in the car, had something to say. It was as though he’d been away a week or two instead of two years. He’s got a job for us, I felt myself think, or hope, and the years between fell instantly away.

Gilbert brought Danny. We took the backseat; Tony sat in front with Minna. Minna lit a cigarette while he steered with his elbows. We turned off Fourth Avenue, down Bergen. Toward Court Street, I thought. Minna put his lighter away and his hand came out of his trench-coat pockets with business cards.

L &L CAR SERVICE, they read. TWENTY-FOUR HOURS. And a phone number. No slogan this time, and no names.

“You mooks ever get learners’ permits?” said Minna.

Nobody had.

“You know where the DMV is, up on Schermerhorn? Here.” He dug out a roll, scrunched off four twenties onto the seat beside Tony, who handed them out. For Minna everything had the same price, was fixed and paid for by the quick application of twenty dollars. That hadn’t changed. “I’ll drop you up there. First I want you to see something.”

It was a tiny storefront on Bergen, just short of Smith Street, boarded so tightly it looked like a condemned building. But I, for one, was already familiar with the inside of it. A few years earlier it had been a miniature candy store, with a single rack of comics and magazines, run by a withered Hispanic woman who’d pinioned my arm when I slipped a copy of Heavy Metal into my jacket and ducked for the door. Now Minna gestured at it grandly: the future home of L &L Car Service.

Minna had an arrangement with a certain Lucas, at Corvairs Driving School, on Livingston Street-we were all to receive lessons, free of charge, beginning tomorrow. The purple Caddy was the only vehicle in L &L’s fleet, but others were on their way. (The car smelled poisonously new, vinyl squeaking like an Indian burn. My probing fingers investigated the backseat armrest ashtray-it contained ten neatly clipped fingernails.) In the meantime we’d be busy getting our licenses and rehabilitating the ruined storefront, fitting it with radios, office equipment, stationery, telephones, tape recorders, microphones (tape recorders? microphones?), a television and a small refrigerator. Minna had money to spend on these things, and he wanted us along to see him spend it. We might look for some suitable clothes while were at it-did we know we looked like rejects from Welcome Back, Kotter?-the only thing to do was drop out of Sarah J. immediately. The suggestion didn’t ruffle any feathers. In a blink we’d fallen into formation, Pavlov’s orphans. We listened to Minna’s new tonalities, distrusting and harsh, as they warmed into something like the old, more generous music, the tune we’d missed but not forgotten. He rolled on: We ought to have a CB-radio setup, this was the twentieth fucking century, had we heard? Who knew how to work a CB? Dead silence, punctured by “Radiobailey! Fine, said Minna, the Freak volunteers. Hello? Hello? We almond-studded cheeseballs were staring like we didn’t know English-what exactly had we been doing for two years anyway, apart from researching how many times a day we could clean out our fish tanks? Silence. Spank our monkeys, rough up our suspects, jerk off, Minna meant-did he have to spell it out? More silence. Hello? Hey, had we ever seen The Conversation? Best fucking movie in the world, Gene Hackman. We knew Gene Hackman? Silence again. We knew him only from Superman-Lex Luthor. It didn’t seem likely Minna meant that Gene Hackman. (Lexluthor, text-lover, lostbrother, went my brain, plumbing up trouble-where was Gerard, the other L in L &L? Minna hadn’t said his name.) Well, we ought to see it, learn a thing or two about surveillance. Talking all the while, he drove us up to Schermerhorn, to the Department of Motor Vehicles. I saw Danny’s eyes dart to the Sarah J. boys playing basketball in the park across the street-but now we were with Minna, a million miles away. We ought to get limousine-operator’s licenses, he went on. They only cost ten dollars more, the test is the same. Don’t smile for the picture, you’ll look like the Prom Date Killers. Did we have girlfriends? Of course not, who’d want a bunch of jerks from nowhere. By the way, the Old Stove was dead. Carlotta Minna had passed two weeks ago; Minna was just settling her affairs now. We wondered what affairs, didn’t ask. Oh, and Minna had gotten married, he thought to mention now. He and his new wife were moving into Carlotta’s old apartment, after first scouring the thirty-year-old sauce off the walls. We jarheads could meet Minna’s bride if we got ourselves haircuts first. Was she from Brooklyn? Tony wanted to know. Not exactly; she grew up on an island. No, you jerks, not Manhattan or Long Island-a real island. We’d meet her. Apparently first we had to be drivers who operated cameras, tape recorders and CB radios, with suits and haircuts, with unsmiling license photos. First we had to become Minna Men, though no one had said those words.

But here, here was the beauty part. By Minna’s own admission, he’d buried the lead: L &L Car Service-it wasn’t really a car service. That was just a front. L &L was a detective agency.

The joke Minna wanted to hear in the emergency room, the joke about Irving, went like this:

A Jewish mother-Mrs. Gushman, we’ll call her-walks into a travel agency. “I vant to go to Tibet,” she says. “Listen lady, take my word for it, you don’t want to go to Tibet. I’ve got a nice package tour for the Florida Keys, or maybe Hawaii-” “No,” says Mrs. Gushman, “I vant to go to Tibet.” “Lady, are you traveling alone? Tibet is no place-” “Sell me a ticket for Tibet!” shouts Mrs. Gushman. “Okay, okay.” So she goes to Tibet. Gets off the plane, says to the first person she sees, “Who’s the greatest holy man in Tibet?” “Why, that would be the High Lama,” comes the reply. “That’s who I vant to see,” says Mrs. Gushman. “Take me to the High Lama.” “Oh, no, you don’t understand, American Lady, the High Lama lives on top of our highest mountain in total seclusion. No one can see the High Lama.” “I’m Mrs. Gushman, I’ve come all the vay to Tibet, and I must see the High Lama!” “Oh, but you could never-” “Which mountain? How do I get there?” So Mrs. Gushman checks into a hotel at the base of the mountain and hires sherpas to take her to the monastery at the top. All the way up they’re trying to explain to her, nobody sees the High Lama-his own monks have to fast and meditate for years before they’re allowed to ask the High Lama a single question. She just keeps pointing her finger and saying “I’m Mrs. Gushman, take me up the mountain!” When they get to the monastery the sherpas explain to the monks-crazy American lady, wants to see the High Lama. She says, “Tell the High Lama Mrs. Gushman is here to see him.” “You don’t understand, we could never-” “Just tell him!” The monks go and come back and they’re shaking their heads in confusion. “We don’t understand, but the High Lama says he will grant you an audience. Do you understand what an