Motherless Brooklyn (30 page)
Read Motherless Brooklyn Online
Authors: Jonathan Lethem
In the meantime I considered what Seminole had been saying, and tried to sift the information from his dingbat theories. If Julia didn’t get a call from the hospital how did she know about Minna’s death?
Again I wondered: Was it Julia who missed her
Rama-lama-ding-dong?
Did she keep it in Boston?
“Listen, you scumbags,” said Seminole. He was compensating desperately for his plummeting authority. “I’d rather tangle with
homies
doing
drive-bys
all day than wade into this Italianate mobster shit. Don’t get big-headed, now—I can see you’re just a couple of fools. It’s the wiseguys pulling your strings I’m worried about.”
“Great,” said Tony. “A paranoid cop.
Wiseguys pulling strings
—you read too many comic books, Cleopatra Jones.”
“Clapperdapper Bailey Johnson!”
“You think I’m stupid,” continued Seminole, on a real tear now. “You think a dumb black cop is going to stumble into your little nest and take it on face value. Car service, detective agency, give me a break. I’m going to push this murder bag just far enough to turn it
over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and then I’m going to get my ass out of here for good. Might even take a vacation, sit on the beach and read about you losers in the Metro section.”
Stumble, wade:
Seminole’s choice of words betrayed him. He really and truly feared he’d already gotten in further than was good for him. I wanted to find a way to allay his fears, I really did. I sort of liked the homicide detective. But everything out of my mouth sounded vaguely like a racial slur.
“Federal Bureau of what?” said Tony. “I never met those guys.”
“Let’s go upstairs and see if Uncle Alphonso and Uncle Leonardo can explain it to you,” said Seminole. “Something tells me they’ve got a working familiarity with the FBI.”
“I don’t think the old guy are home anymore,” said Tony.
“Oh yeah? Where’d they go?”
“They went through a tunnel in the basement,” said Tony. “They had to get back to their hideout, since they’ve got James Bond—or Batman, I can’t remember which—roasting over a slow fire.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’t worry, though. Batman always gets away. These supervillains never learn.”
“Uncle Batman!” I shouted. They couldn’t know how much work it was for me to keep my hands on that dashboard, my neck straight. “Unclebailey Blackman!
Barnamum Bat-a-potamus!
”
“That’s enough, Alibi,” said Seminole. “Get out of the car.”
“What?”
“Get lost, go home. You annoy me, man. Tony and me are going to have a little talk.”
“C’mon, Blacula,” complained Tony. “We’ve been talking for hours. I’ve got nothing to say to you.”
“Every name you call me I think up a couple more questions,” said Seminole. He waved at me with his gun. “Get lost.”
I gaped at Seminole, incredulous.
“I mean it. Get.”
I opened the door. Then I thought to find the Pontiac’s keys and hand them to Tony.
Tony glared at me. “Go back to the office and wait for me.”
“Oh, sure,” I said, and stepped out onto the curb.
“Close the door,” said Seminole, training gun and gaze on Tony.
“Thanks,
Count Chocula
,” I said, and skipped away, literally.
Have you noticed yet that I relate everything to my Tourette’s? Yup, you guessed it, it’s a tic. Counting is a symptom, but counting symptoms is also a symptom, a tic
plus ultra
. I’ve got meta-Tourette’s. Thinking about ticcing, my mind racing, thoughts reaching to touch every possible symptom. Touching touching. Counting counting. Thinking thinking. Mentioning mentioning Tourette’s. It’s sort of like talking about telephones over the telephone, or mailing letters describing the location of various mailboxes. Or like a tugboater whose favorite anecdote concerns actual tugboats.
There is nothing Tourettic about the New York City subways.
Though at each step I felt the gaze of an army of invisible doormen on my neck, I was nevertheless exultant to be back on the Upper East Side. I hurried down Lexington from the Eighty-sixth Street station, with only ten minutes to spare before five o’clock: zazen. I didn’t want to be late for my first. While I was still on the street, though, I took out the cell phone and called Loomis.
“Yeah, I was just about to call you.” I could hear him chewing a sandwich or a chicken leg, and pictured his open mouth, smacking lips. Hadn’t he been at lunch two hours before? “I got the goods on that building.”
“Let’s have it—quick.”
“This guy in Records, he was going on and on about it. That’s a sweet little building, Lionel. Way outta my class.”
“It’s Park Avenue, Loomis.”
“Well, there’s Park Avenue and then there’s this. You gotta have a hundred million to get on the waiting list for this place, Lionel. This kind of people, their other house is an
island.”
I heard Loomis quoting someone smarter than himself. “Right, but what about Fujisaki?”
“Hold your horses, I’m getting there. This sort of place, there’s a whole staff—it’s like a bunch of mansions stacked together. They got secret passages, wine cellars, a laundry service, swimming pool, servants’ quarters, private chef. Whole secret economy. There’s only five or six buildings like this in the city—the place where Bob Dylan got killed, what’s it, the
Nova Scotia
? That’s a doghouse in comparison. This place is for the old-money people, they’ll turn down Seinfeld,
Nixon
, doesn’t matter. They don’t even give a shit.”
“Include me in that category,” I said, unable to discern any useful information in the Garbage Cop’s jabber. “I’m looking for names, Loomis.”
“Your Fujisaki’s the management corporation. Whole bunch of other Jap names in there—guess they own half of New York if you started digging. This is a serious money operation, Lionel. Ullman, far as I can tell, he was just Fujisaki’s accountant. So clue me in: Why would Gilbert go after an accountant?”
“Ullman was the last guy Frank was supposed to see,” I said. “He never got to him.”
“Minna was supposed to kill Ullman?”
“I don’t know.”
“Or vice versa?”
“I don’t know.”
“Or did the same guy kill them both?”
“I don’t know, Loomis.”
“So you aren’t learning much besides what I’m digging up for you, huh?”
“Eat me, Loomis.”
“I’m so glad you’re here,” said Kimmery when she opened the door to me. “You’re just in time. Mostly everybody’s sitting already.” She kissed me on the cheek again. “There’s a lot of excitement about the monks.”
“I’m feeling a lot of excitement myself.” In fact, I felt an instant euphoria at Kimmery’s alleviating presence. If this was the prospect of Zen I was ready to begin my training.
“You’ll have to take a cushion right away. Just sit anywhere but up at the front of the line. We’ll work on your posture some other time—for now you can sit and concentrate on your breathing.”
“I’ll do that.” I followed her up the stairs.
“That’s really everything anyway, breathing. You could work on just that for the rest of your life.”
“I’ll probably have to.”
“Take off your shoes.”
Kimmery pointed, and I added my shoes to a neat row in the hallway. It was a bit disconcerting to surrender them and with them my street-readiness, but in fact my aching dogs were grateful for the chance to breathe and stretch.
The second-floor sitting room was gloomy now, overhead track lighting still dark, the fading November daylight insufficient. I spotted the source of the heavy smell this time, a pot of smoldering incense on a high shelf beside a jade Buddha. The walls of the room were covered with undecorated paper screens, the glossy parquet floor with thin cushions. Kimmery led me to a spot near the back of the room and sat beside me, folded her legs and straightened her back, then nodded wide-eyed to suggest I imitate her moves. If only she knew. I
sat and worked my big legs into position, grabbing my shins with both hands, only once jostling the sitter ahead of me, who turned and quickly glared, then resumed his posture of grace. The rows of cushions around us were mostly full with Zen practitioners, twenty-two when I counted, some in black robes, others in beatniky street clothes, corduroy or sweatpants and turtlenecks, not one in a suit like me. In the dimness I couldn’t make out any faces.
So I sat and waited and wondered exactly what I was there for, though it was tough to keep my back straight as those I saw around me. I glanced at Kimmery. Her eyes were already peacefully shut. In twenty-four hours—it was only slightly more than that since Gilbert and I had parked at the curb outside the day before—my confusion at the Zendo’s significance had doubled and redoubled, become veiled in successive layers. The conversation I’d heard on the wire, those sneering insinuations, now seemed impossible to fix to this place. Kimmery’s voice, ingenuous, unconspiring, was all I heard now. That, of course, against a background of my own interior babble. As I sat beside Kimmery, sheltered inside her tic-canceling field, I felt all the more keenly the uneasy, half-stoppered force of my own language-generator, my Multi-Mind, that tangle of responses and mimickings, of interruptions of interruptions.
I gazed at her again. She was
sitting
sincerely, not wondering about me. So I shut my eyes and, taking my own little crack at enlightenment, tried to unify my mind and get a fix on my Buddha nature.
The first thing I heard was Minna’s voice:
I dare you to shut up for a whole twenty minutes sometime, you free human freakshow
.
I pushed it away, thought
One Mind
instead.
One Mind.
Tell me one, Freakshow. One I don’t already know
.
I vant to go to Tibet
.
One Mind. I focused on my breathing.
Come home, Irving
.
One Mind. Sick Mind. Dirty Mind. Bailey Mind.
One Mind.
Oreo Man.
When I opened my eyes again, I’d adjusted to the gloom. At the front of the room was a large bronze gong, and the cushions nearest the gong were empty as if readied for celebrity sitters, perhaps the
important monks
. The rows of heads had developed features, though mostly I was looking at ears and napes, the neckline of haircuts. The crowd was a mix of sexes, the women mostly skinny, with earrings and hairstyles that cost something, the men on average more lardish and scruffy, their haircuts overdue. I spotted Wallace’s ponytail and bald spot and furniture-stiff posture up near the front. And a row ahead of me, closer to the entrance, sat Pinched and Indistinct, my would-be abductors. At last I understood: They
were
men of peace. Was there a severe shortage of human beings on the Upper East Side, so the same small cast of doormen was required to pose in costume, here as goons, there as seekers after serenity? At least they’d shed their blue suits, made a greater commitment to this new identity. Garbed in black robes, their postures were admirably erect, presumably earned by extensive training, years of sacrifice. They hadn’t been working all that time on their strong-arm patter, that was for sure.
So much for my breathing. I managed to check my voice, though. Pinched and Indistinct both had their eyes shut, and I’d arrived last, so I had the drop on them. They weren’t exactly my idea of big trouble anyway. But I was reminded that the stolen cell phone and borrowed beeper in my jacket might shatter this ancient Eastern silence at any moment. Moving quietly as possible, I drew them out and turned off the cell phone’s ringer, set Minna’s beeper to “vibrate.” As I slipped
them back into my jacket’s inner pocket an open hand slapped the back of my head and neck, hard.
Stung, I whipped around. But my attacker was already past me, marching solemnly between the mats to the front of the room, the first in a file of six bald Japanese men, all draped in robes revealing glimpses of sagging brown skin and threads of white underarm hair. Important monks. The lead monk had swerved out of his way to deliver the blow. I’d been reprimanded or perhaps offered a jolt of enlightenment—did I now know the sound of one hand clapping? Eitheray, I felt the heat of blood rushing to my ears and scalp.
Kimmery hadn’t noticed, just placidly Zenned right through the whole sequence. Maybe she was further along on her spiritual path than she realized.
The six moved to the front and took the unoccupied mats near the gong. And a seventh entered the room, a little behind the others, also robed, also with a polished bald skull. But he wasn’t small and Japanese and his body hair wasn’t white and it wasn’t limited to his underarms. He had silky black plumes of back and shoulder hair, rising from all sides to circle his neck with a fringe. It wasn’t a look the designer of the robe had likely had in mind. He moved to the front of the room and took the last of the VIP spots before I could see his face, but I thought of Kimmery’s description and decided this must be the American teacher, founder of the Zendo, the Roshi.
Irving
. When are you coming home, Irving?
Your family misses you
.
The joke nagged at me, but I couldn’t put it to work. Was that Roshi’s original name, his American name: Irving? Was Roshi-Irving the voice on the wire?
If so, why? What linked Minna to this place?
They settled into quietude up front. I stared at the row of bald heads, the six monks and Roshi, but discerned nothing. Even Pinched and Indistinct were meditating serenely. Minutes crept past and I was the only set of open eyes. Someone coughed and I faked a cough in imitation. If I kept one eye on Kimmery I was mostly calm, though. It
was like having a bag of White Castles beside me on the car seat. I wondered how deep her influence over my syndrome could run if given the chance, how much of that influence I could hope to import. How close I could get. I shut my eyes, trusting Pinched and Indistinct to stay planted obliviously on their cushions, and drifted into some pleasant thoughts about bodies, about Kimmery’s body, her nervous elegant limbs. Perhaps this was the key to Zen, then.
We don’t exactly have God
, she’d said.
We just sit and try to stay awake
. Well, I wasn’t having any trouble staying awake. And as my penis stiffened it occurred to me I’d found my One Mind.
I was jostled from my reverie by a sound at the door. I opened my eyes and turned to see the Polish giant standing in the entrance to the sitting room, filling the doorway with his square shoulders, holding in his fist a plastic produce bag full of kumquats and gazing at the roomful of Zen practitioners with an expression of absolute and utter serenity. He wasn’t in a robe, but he might have been Buddha himself for the benignity of his gaze.
Before I could figure a plan or response there came a commotion at the front of the room. A commotion by the local standards anyway: One of the Japanese monks stood and bowed to Roshi, then to the other monks in his party, then to the room at large. You still would have heard a pin drop, but the rustling of his robe was signal enough, and eyes opened everywhere. The giant stepped into the room, still clutching his kumquats like a bag of live goldfish, and took a mat—a couple actually—on the other side of Kimmery, between us and the door. I reminded myself that the giant hadn’t seen me, at least not yesterday. He certainly wasn’t giving me any special notice—or anyonese for that matter. Instead he settled into his spot, looking ready for the monk’s lecture. Quite a gathering we made now, the various mugs and lugs attending to the wise little men from the East. Pinched
and Indistinct might be real Zen students playing at thuggishness, but Pierogi Monster was undoubtedly the opposite. The kumquats, I was pretty sure, were a giveaway—weren’t they a Chinese fruit, not Japanese at all? I wanted to hug Kimmery toward me, away from the killer’s reach, but then I wanted to do a lot of things—I always do.
The monk bowed to us again, searched our faces briefly, then began speaking, so abruptly and casually it was as if he were resuming a talk he’d been having with himself.
“Daily life, I fly on an airplane, I take a taxicab to visit Yorkville Zendo”—this came out
Yolkville-ah
—“I feel excitement, thoughts, anticipations, what will my friend Jerry-Roshi show me? Will I go to a very good Manhattan restaurant, sleep on a very good bed in New York City hotel?” He stomped his sandaled foot as though testing out a mattress.
I vant to go to Tibet!
The joke insisted itself upon me again. My calm was under pressure from all sides, the goons everywhere, my echolalia provoked by the monk’s speech. But I couldn’t turn and gaze and refresh my dose of Kimmery without also taking in Minna’s titanic killer—he was so big that his outline framed her on all sides despite his being farther away, an optical trick I couldn’t afford to find fascinating.