Motherless Brooklyn

the Zendo, that sort of thing. Hey, take the fucking Drive. Seventy-ninth Street there’s an on-ramp.”

“I can’t get over,” complained Pinched, eyeing lanes of traffic.

“What so great about the FDR?” said Indistinct. “Why can’t we stay on the streets?”

“What, you want to pull over and rough him up on Park Avenue?” said Chunky.

“Maybe just a scare without the roughing-up will do,” I suggested. “Get this over with, get on with the day.”

“Stop him talking so much.”

“Yeah, but he’s got a point.”

“Eatmepointman!”

Chunky clamped his hand over my mouth. At that moment I heard a high-pitched two-note signal. The four of them, and me, began looking around the car for the source of the noise. It was as if we were in a video game and had crossed up to the next level, were about to be destroyed by aliens we couldn’t see coming. Then I realized that the beeping issued from my coat pocket: Minna’s beeper going off.

“What’s that?”

I twisted my head free. Chunky didn’t fight me. “Barnamum Beeper,” I said.

“What’s that, some special kind? Get it out of his pocket. Didn’t you chumps frisk him?”

“Screw you.”

“Jesus.”

They puttheir hands on me and quickly found the beeper. The digital readout showed a Brooklyn-Queens-Bronx prefix on the number. “Who’s that?” said Pimples.

I frowned and shrugged: didn’t know. Truly, I didn’t recognize the number. Someone who thought Minna was still alive, I guessed, and shuddered a little. That scared me more than my abductors did.

“Make him call it,” said Pinched from the front.

“You want to pull over to let him call?”

“Larry, you got the phone?”

Indistinct turned in his seat and offered me a cell phone.

“Call the number.”

I dialed, they waited. We inched down Second Avenue. The airspace of the car hummed with tension. The cell phone rang, dit-dit-dit, a miniature, a toy that effortlessly commanded our focus, our complete attention. I might have popped it in my mouth and gulped it down instead of holding it to my ear. Dit-dit-dit, it rang again, then somebody picked up.

Garbage Cop.

“Lionel?” said Loomis.

“Mmmmhuh,” I replied, squelching an outburst.

“Get this. What’s the difference between three hundred sixty-five blow jobs and a radial tire?”

“Don’tcare!” I shouted. The four in the car all jumped.

“One’s a Goodyear, the other’s a great year,” said Loomis proudly. He knew he’d nailed the riddle, no faltering this time, not a word out of place.

“Where are you calling from?” I asked. “You called me.”

“You beeped me, Loomis. Where are you?”

“I don’t know”-his voice dimmed-“hey, what’s the name of this place? Oh, yeah? Thanks. Bee-Bee-Que? Really, just like that, three letters? Go figure. Lionel, you there?”

“Here.”

“It’s a diner called B-B-Q, just like barbecue, only three letters. I eat here all the time, and I never even knew that!”

“Why’d you beep me, Loomis?” Beep and Rebeep are sitting on a fence-

“You told me to. You wanted that address, right? Ullman, the dead guy.”

“Uh, that’s right,” I said, shrugging at Chunky, who still held my neck, but lightly, leaving me room to place the phone. He scowled at me, but it wasn’t my fault if he was confused. I was confused, too. Confused and conworried.

“Well, I got it right here,” said the Garbage Cop pridefully.

“What’s the good of driving him around watching him make a phone call?” complained Pimples.

“Take it away from him,” said Pinched from the driver’s seat.

“Just punch him in the stomach,” said Indistinct. “Make him scared.”

“You got someone there with you?” said Loomis.

The four in the car had begun to chafe at seeing their faint authority slip away, devolve to the modern technology, the bit of plastic and wire in my palm. I had to find a way to calm them down. I nodded and widened my eyes to show my cooperation, and mouthed a just-wait signal to them, hoping they’d recall the protocol from crime movies: pretend they weren’t there listening, and thus gather information on the sly.

I couldn’t help it that they weren’t actually listening.

“Tell me the address,” I said.

“Okay, here goes,” said Loomis. “Got a pen?”

“Whose address?” whispered Chunky in my other ear. He’d caught my hint. He was schooled enough in the cliches to be manipulable; his compatriots I wasn’t so sure of.

“Tell me Ullman’s address,” I said for their sake. Man-Salad- Dress went my brain. I swallowed hard to keep it from crossing the threshold.

“Yeah, I got it,” said the Garbage Cop sarcastically. “Whose else would you want?”

“Ullman?” said Chunky, not to me but to Pimples. “He’s talking about Ullman?”

“Whose! A! Dress!” I shrieked.

“Aw, quit,” said Loomis, jaded by now. My other audience wasn’t so blase. Pimples ripped the cell phone out of my hand, and Chunky wrestled my arm behind my back so I was wrenched forward nearly against the back of the driver’s seat, and down. It was like he wanted me draped in his lap for a spanking. Meanwhile, up front, Pinched and Indistinct began arguing fiercely about parking, about whether they’d fit in some spot.

Pimples put the phone to his own ear and listened, but Loomis hung up, or maybe just got quiet and listened back, so they were silent together. Pinched managed to park, or double-park-I couldn’t tell which from my strained vantage. The two up front were still muttering at one another, but Chunky was quiet, just turning my arm another degree or two, experimenting with actually hurting me, trying it on for size.

“You don’t like hearing the name Ullman,” I said, wincing.

“Ullman was a friend,” said Chunky.

“Don’t let him talk about Ullman,” said Pinched.

“This is stupid,” said Indistinct, with consummate disgust.

“You’re stupid,” said Chunky. “We’re supposed to scare a guy, let’s do it.”

“I’m not so scared,” I said. “You guys seem more scared to me. Scared of talking about Ullman.”

“Yeah, well, if we’re scared you don’t know why,” said Chunky. “And don’t guess either. Don’t open your trap.”

“You’re scared of a big Polish guy,” I said.

“This is stupid,” said Indistinct again. He sounded like he might cry. He got out of the car and slammed the door behind him.

Pimples finally quit listening to the silence Loomis had left behind on the cell phone, shut it down, and put it on the seat between us.

“What if we are scared of him?” said Chunky. “We ought to be, take it from us. We wouldn’t be working for him if we weren’t.” He loosened his grip on my arm, so I was able to straighten up and look around. We were parked outside a popular coffee shop on Second. The window was full of sullen kids flirting by working on tiny computers and reading magazines. They didn’t notice us, carful of lugs, and why should they?

Indistinct was nowhere to be seen.

“I sympathize,” I said, to keep them talking. “I’m scared of the big guy, too. It’s just you can’t throw a scare so good when you’re scared.”

I thought of Tony. If he’d come to the Zendo last night shouldn’t he have triggered the same alarm I had? Shouldn’t he have drawn these would-be toughs, this clown car loaded with fresh graduates from Clown College?