“Mojo,” was his reply.
“Mojo? Mojo who?”
“Don’t worry about Mojo who. Use my name and anyone who knows his tush from his tits will put you onto Mojo. Here,” he flipped one of his business cards at me. “Is that it?”
“One thing more.” I put forth weakly.
“That is. .”
“Got an ex-detective for a friend these days. I wanna throw him a big bash, but I don’t know how to get in touch with his old buddies and partners. I figured you could get me a list without alerting anyone’s attention.”
“Name?”
“John Francis MacClough. Rhymes with cow,” I added out of habit.
“You’ll have your list tomorrow. I won’t be in, but I’ll leave it at the front desk.”
“Thank’s, Larry,” I was up, extending my hand for a good-bye shake.
Cassius wasn’t having any of it. I wouldn’t be exiting just yet. His cold gaze directed me back to my seat.
“Mary,” he pressed a button and spoke into a speaker box, “come in a minute. You,” Larry turned to me, “want anything?”
I shook him off. The longest ten seconds I’d ever experienced went by before Mary, a stern-faced woman of the middle years and the bulging middle, trotted her rasping pantyhose over to Larry’s desk.
“Call Billy Minter at One Police Plaza. Get me a copy of this guy’s file,” Mary plucked the paper with Johnny’s name on it out of her boss’s fingers. “I want to know who his partners were, the whole nine yards. And if Minter, that fat fuck, gives you a hard time, put him on the line.”
Mary was gone.
“I hear you’re an author these days,” Larry focused back on me.
“I write.”
“I’ve read all of it. It’s good.”
I nodded my thanks and surprise.
“Yeah, I read it. That’s why I thought you came here today. I thought maybe you needed a little help in getting an agent or a contract. But no.” Larry did a rare thing. He laughed, really. “That’s not you, Klein,” the laughing came to an abrupt end. “You wouldn’t come to me for yourself. Not you. Not Sir Knight.”
“Look Larry-”
“Don’t ‘look Larry’ me. Don’t you dare. I appreciated what you did for me as a kid, Klein. That’s why there was no fallout last time. I closed that account a long time ago,” Larry wiped his bony hands past one another twice. “I’m a powerful man now and my favors cost considerably more than my legal services. These days I pull more strings than Harpo Marx. Do we understand one another?”
I indicated that I did.
“Good,” Larry twisted his thin lips into an approximation of a smile. “This time, Sir Dylan, when I ask for a favor in return, don’t disappoint me.”
We didn’t shake hands. You didn’t need to shake with the devil. I had my hand on the door when the fallen angel called out to me.
“Party! Big bash, huh. Don’t forget to invite me. I’m a lot of things, Klein, but stupid isn’t one of ’em. I just hope this cop’s worth it to you.”
So did I.
Mr. Fancy Picasso
“Mojo?” the hefty, black security guard smiled, resting his hand carelessly on the handle of his Magnum. “You’ll find Mojo down the second isle on your right, third stall on your right. Can’t miss Mojo.”
But apparently I had. I stood in front of a small grubby booth. The cheaply engraved plaque read, “Minkowitz, Inc.-Purveyors of Fine Gems and Jewels.” Seated on a shaky piano stool behind the low wall and glass was a sour-looking Hasidic man in his late forties, early fifties maybe. The wiry salt and pepper beard and curls made a more accurate guess impossible. He wore a dandruff-speckled yarmulke held in place with a worn shiny hairpin. Currently he was inspecting a herd of small diamonds laid out on his sickly pale and pudgy palm.
I watched him. His concentration was incredible, and he manipulated the little stones with an ease and confidence that seemed more instinctive than learned. Occasionally he would remove his black-rimmed glasses, the joints of which were held together with bandaids, shove an eyepiece into his left eye and hold the clear rocks up to his face. All very interesting, but I had to find Mojo. I started back to the security guard.
“I’m who you’re lookin’ for mister,” the man behind the Minkowitz sign called to me without picking his head up from the stones. His voice had that familiar roller coaster lilt of a Yiddish speaker.
“Sorry,” I came back over, “not buying today.”
“From me, you couldn’t afford to buy,” he let the diamonds roll off his palms like so much dust into a folded paper envelope. “You lookin’ for Mojo? I’m Mojo.”
“Mojo Monkowitz?” everything about me was incredulous.
“Listen totaleh, vit a last name like Minkowitz, vould it matta vhat vent in front?” he asked in an accent thick like chicken fat on rye bread.
“You got a point. How-”
“Before we start with the questions, he cut me off, returning to a less theatrical dialect, “who sent you? Nobody comes to Mojo without being sent.”
I handed him Larry’s business card and my infantile drawing of the heart. He read the card, looked at the drawing and shook his head.
“You friends with this man?” Mojo inquired, holding up the business card.
“We grew up together. Did a little work together. I wouldn’t call us friends.”
“Good. Larry Feld is not a righteous man,” Minkowitz sat down and inspected my artwork. “I knew his parents. Good people. Sad little people, but they ran a clean shop. You knew them, Izzi and Anna?”
“Lived two doors down from ‘em for eighteen years. But it’s hard to really know camp survivors,” I offered my opinion.
“Quite so,” he showed me his numerical tattoo. “I do these favors not for the son, but for the pain of the parents. You understand this?” He seemed anxious that I understand and I nodded that I did. “You want to know who handles pieces like this, who makes pieces like this?”
“That’s the big question.”
“Describe a little better what the piece is made out of. How many stones? How big?”
I gave him the specs to the best of my memory. As I did, he shook his head in agreement as if I was simply reinforcing the conclusion he’d already arrived at.
“Fischel Kahn,” Mojo winked. “Fine work. Not much demand for his stuff anymore.”
“Where’s his booth?”
“Four aisles over, but he’s retired maybe fifteen twenty years already. Sold his business to an Iraqi Jew,” Mojo’s sour expression returned. Despite the monolithic image, there were large groups of Jews that couldn’t stomach one another.
“Shi-” I stopped myself. “Sorry.”
“Quiet. Quiet,” Minkowitz waved off my apology and began stroking his beard as if it were a Siamese cat. “Can’t a man think a little?” A moment passed. “Sylvia. . Sylvia. . Sylvia Kim!” Mojo’s eyes lit up.
“Kim? An Asian?” I wondered.
“Used to be Kimmelmann. Now it’s Kim. She’s got her own shop. Next aisle over. Once worked for Fish. Maybe she can help,” he handed me Larry’s card and my rendering and shook my hand. “Mazel and brucha, luck and a blessing to you on your journey.”
“I understood. Thanks. What do I owe you?”
“Like I said before,” the survivor admonished, “from me you can’t afford to buy.”
“You think she’ll remember the piece?” I questioned as an afterthought, pointing at my drawing.
“Listen, Mr. Fancy Picasso with the drawing already. If she was around when the piece was sold, she’ll remember. We’re very good at remembering.” He looked at his tattoo and went back to work.
Sylvia had frosty blond hair that was blown and permed and sprayed into submission. Her teeth were as white as the Himalayas and as natural as astroturf. The skin on her face was Florida tanned and taut as if it were a plastic bag stretched to its limit. Her flaming nails weren’t quite as long as piano keys and there was so much jewelry on her fingers, I could barely see the flesh. She was covered in enough metal and mineral to cover half the Periodic Chart. I wondered if she floated when the hardware came off.