Two men took me by the elbows and hustled me into a car waiting at the curb.
The four of them wore identical blue suits with black piping on the legs, and identical black sunglasses. They looked like a band that plays at weddings. Four white guys, assortedly chunky, pinched in the face, with pimples, and indistinct. Their car was a rental. Chunky sat in the backseat waiting and when the two who’d picked me up crushed me into the back beside him, he immediately put his arm around my neck in a sort of brotherly choke hold. The two who’d picked me off the street-Pimples and Indistinct-jammed in beside me, to make four of us on the backseat. It was a bit crowded.
“Get in the front,” said Chunky, the one holding my neck.
“Me?” I said.
“Shut up. Larry, get out. There’s too many. Go in the front.”
“Okay, okay,” said the one on the end, Indistinct or Larry. He got out of the back and into the empty front passenger seat and the one driving-Pinched-took off. Chunky loosened his hold when we got into the downtown traffic on Second Avenue, but left his arm draped over my shoulders.
“Take the Drive,” he said.
“What?”
“Tell him take the East Side Drive.”
“Where are we going?”
“I want to be on the highway.”
“Why not just drive in circles?”
“My car is parked up here,” I said. “You could drop me off. ”
“Shut up. Why can’t we just drive in circles?”
“You shut up. It should look like we’re going somewhere, stupid. We’re really scaring him going in circles.”
“I’m listening to what you say no matter how you drive,” I said, wanting to make them feel better. “There’s four of you and one of me.”
“We want more than listening,” said Chunky. “We want you scared.”
But I wasn’t scared. It was eight-thirty in the morning, and we were fighting traffic on Second Avenue. There weren’t even any co go in, just honking delivery trucks tied up by pedestrians. And the closer I looked at these guys the less I was impressed. For one thing, Chunky’s hand on my neck was soft, his skin was soft, and his hold on me rather tender. And he was the toughest of the bunch. They weren’t calm, they weren’t good at what they were doing, and they weren’t tough. None of them, as far as I could tell, was wearing a gun.
For another thing, all four of their sunglasses still bore price tags, dangling fluorescent orange ovals reading $6.99!
I reached out and batted at Pimples’s price tag. He turned away, and my finger hooked the earpiece and jerked the shades off his face, into his lap. “Shit,” said Pimples, and hurried the glasses back onto his face as if I might recognize him without them.
“Hey, none of that,” said Chunky, and hugged me again. He reminded me of my long-ago kissing tic, the way he was crowding me close to him in the car.
“Okay,” I said, though I knew it would be hard not to bat at the price tags if they came within reach. “But what’s the game here, guys?”
“We’re supposed to throw a scare into you,” said Chunky, distracted, watching Pinched drive. “Stay away from 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 clichés to be manipulable; his compatriots I wasn’t so sure of.