“What time did Gilbert call you?” I interrupted.
“I don’t know, around seven or eight, maybe nine almost,” he said, succinctly demonstrating his unfitness for the force.
“It’s-Tourette is the stickman!-only ten now, Loomis.”
“Okay, it was just after eight.”
“Did you find out where Ullman lived?”
“Downtown somewhere. I gave Gilbert the address.”
“You don’t remember where it was?”
“Nah.”
Loomis wasn’t going to be any help. He seemed to know this as well as I, and immediately launched into another digression, as if to say, I’m useless, but no hard feelings, okay? “So you heard the one about how many Catholics does it take to screw in a lightbulb?”
“I’ve heard that one, Loomis. No jokes, please.”
“Ah, come on. What about why did the blonde stare at the carton of orange juice?”
I was silent. We came off the bridge, at Cadman Plaza. I’d be rid of him soon.
“ ’Cause it said ‘concentrate,’ get it?”
This was another thing I hated about Loomis. Years ago he’d latched on to Minna’s joke-telling contests, decided he could compete. But he favored idiot riddles, not jokes at all, no room for character or nuance. He didn’t seem to know the difference.
“Got it,” I admitted.
“What about how do you titillate an ocelot?”
“What?”
“Titillate an ocelot. You know, like a big cat. I think.”
“It’s a big cat. How do you titillate it, Loomiseemed D; “You oscillate its tit a lot, get it?”
“Eat me Ocelot!” I screamed as we turned onto Court Street. Loomis’s crappy punning had slid right under the skin of my symptoms. “Lancelot ancillary oscillope! Octapot! Tittapocamus!”
The garbage cop laughed. “Jesus, Lionel, you crack me up. You never quit with that routine.”
“It’s not a-root-ocelot,” I shrieked through my teeth. Here, finally, was what I hated most in Loomis: He’d always insisted, from the time we met as teenagers to this day, that I was elaborately feigning and could keep from ticcing if I wanted to. Nothing would dissuade him, no example or demonstration, no program of education. I’d once shown him the book Minna gave me; he glanced at it and laughed. I was making it up. As far as he was concerned, my Tourette’s was just an odd joke, one going mostly over his head, stretched out over the course of fifteen years.
“Tossed salad!” he said. “Gotcha!” He liked to think he was playing along.
“Go touchalot!” I slapped him on the thickly padded shoulder of his coat, so suddenly the car swerved with my movement.
“Christ, look out!”
I tapped him five more times, my driving steady now.
“I can’t get over you,” he said. “Even at a time like this. I guess it’s sentimental, like a way of saying, if Frank were still here. Since that routine always did keep him busted up.”
We pulled up outside L &L. The lights in the storefront were on. Somebody had returned since my jaunt to the Sixth Precinct.
“I thought you were driving me home.” Loomis lived on Nevins Street, near the projects.
“You can walk from here, gofuckacop.”
“C’mon, Lionel.”
I parked in the open spot in across from the storefront. The sooner Loomis and I were out of each other’s presence, the better.
“Walk,” I said.
“At least lemme use the can,” he whined. “Those jerks at the station wouldn’t let me. I been holding it.”
“If you’ll do one thing for me.”
“Whuzzat?”
“Ullman’s address,” I said. “You found it once. I need it, Loomis.”
“I can get it tomorrow morning when I’m back at my desk. You want me to call you here?”
I took one of Minna’s cards out of my pocket and handed it to him. “Call the beeper number. I’ll be carring it.”
“Okay, all right, now will you lemme take a leak?”
I didn’t speak, just clicked the car locks up and down automatically six times, then got out. Loomis followed me to the storefront, and inside.
Danny came out of the back, stubbing a cigarette in the countertop ashtray as he passed. He always dressed the prettiest of us Minna Men, but his lean black suit suddenly looked like it had been worn too many days in a row. He reminded me of an out-of-work mortician. He glanced at me and Loomis and pursed his lips but didn’t speak, and I couldn’t really get anything out of his eyes. I felt I didn’t know him with Minna gone. Danny and I functioned as expressions of two opposed ends of Frank Minna’s impulses: him a tall, silent body that attracted women and intimidated men, me a flapping inane mouth that covered the world in names and descriptions. Average us and you might have Frank Minna back, sort of. Now, without Minna for a conduit between us, Danny and I had to begin again grasping one another as entities, as though we were suddenly fourteen years old again and occupying our opposite niches at St. Vincent’s Home for Boys.
In fact, I had a sudden yearning that Danny should be holding a basketball, so that I could say “Good shot!” or exhort him to dunk it. Instead we stared at one another.
“ ’Scuse me,” said Loomis, scooting past me and waving his hand at Danny. “Gotta use your toilet.” He disappeared into the back.
“Where’s Tony?” I said.
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
“Well, I don’t know. I hope he’s doing better than Gilbert. I just left him in the lockup at the Sixth.” I realized it sounded as if I’d actually seen him, but I let the implication stand. Loomis wouldn’t call me on it, even if he heard from the bathroom.
Danny didn’t look all that surprised. The shock of Minna’s death made this new turn unimpressive by comparison, I supposed. “What’s he in for?”
“Ullmanslaughter!-the guy Tony sent Gilbert to find, he turned up dead. They pinned it on Gilbert.”
Danny only scratched at the end of his nose thoughtfully.
“So where were you?” I said. “I thought you were minding the store.”
“Went for a bite.”
“I was here for forty-five minutes.” A lie-I doubted it was more than fifteen, but I felt like pushing him. “Guess we missed each other.”
“Any calls? See that homosapien, homogenize, genocide, can’tdecide, candyeyes, homicide cop?”
He shook his head. He was holding something back-but then it occurred to me that I was too.
Danny and I stooensively regarding each other, waiting for the next question to form. I felt a vibration deep inside, profounder tics lurking in me, gathering strength. Or perhaps I was only feeling my hunger at last.
Loomis popped out of the back. “Jesus, you guys look bad. What a day, huh?”
We stared at him.
“Well, I think we owe Frank a moment of silence, don’t you guys?”
I wanted to point out that what Loomis had interrupted was a moment of silence, but I let it go.
“Little something in the way of remembrance? Bow your heads, you turkeys. The guy was like your father. Don’t end the day arguing with each other, for crying out loud.”
Loomis had a point, or enough of one anyway, to shame me and Danny into letting him have his way. So we stood in silence, and when I saw that Danny and Loomis had each closed their eyes I closed mine too. Together we made up some lopped-off, inadequate version of the Agency-Danny standing for himself and Tony, I for myself, and Loomis, I suppose, for Gilbert. But I was moved anyway, for a second.