We turned on Smith, and Minna parked us a block below the empty supermarket lot. The carnival had shut down for the night, plywood boards up over the concessions, rides stilled, the evening’s discarded beer cups and sausage wrappers glowing against the moonlit rubblescape. We crept onto the lot with our implements, following Minna wordlessly now, no longer chafing at his leadership, instead lulled into our deep obedient rhythm as his Men. He pointed at the Ferris wheel.
“Take it out.”
“Eh?”
“Destroy the wheel, you candied yams.”
Gilbert understood soonest, perhaps because the task suited his skills and temperament so well. He took a swing at the nearest line of neon with his chunk of pipe, smashing it easily, bringing a rain of silver dust. Tony and Danny and I followed his lead. We attacked the body of the wheel, our first swings tentative, measuring our strength, then lashing out, unloading. It was easy to damage the neon, not easy at all to impress the frame of the wheel, but we set at it, attacked any joint or vulnerable weld, prying up the electrical cable and chopping at it with the sharpest edge of the wrench until insulation and wire were bare and mangled, then frayed. Minna himself wielded the Yankee bat, splintering its wood against the gates that held riders into their seats, not breaking them but changing their shape. Gilbert and I got inside the frame of the wheel and with all our weight dragged at one of the chairs until we ruptured the hinge. Then we found the brake and released the wheel to turn so that we could apply our malicious affection to the whole of it. A couple of Dominican teenagers stood watching us from across the street. We ignored them, bore down on the Ferris wheel, hurrying but not frantic, absolutely Minna’s to direct but not even needing direction. We acted as one body to destroy the amusement. This was the Agency at its mature peak: unquestioning and thorough in carrying out an action even when it bordered on sheer Dada.
“Frank loved you, Lionel,” said Rockaforte.
“I, uh, I know.”
“For that reason we care for you, for that reason we are concerned.”
“Though we have not seen you since you were a boy,” said Matricardi.
“A boy who barked,” said Rockaforte. “We remember. Frank brought and you stood before us in this very room and you barked.”
“And Frank spoke of your sickness many times.”
“He loved you though he considered you a freak.”
“He used that very word.”
“You helped him build, you were one of his boys, and now you are a man and you stand before us in this hour of pain and misunderstanding.”
Matricardi and Rockaforte had looked sepulchral to me as a teenager and they looked no worse now, their skin mummified, their thin hair in a kind of spider- sheen over their reflective pates, Matricardi’s ears and scarred nose dwarfing his other features, Rockaforte’s face puffier and more potatolike. They were dressed as twins in black suits, whether consciously in mourning or not I couldn’t know. They sat together on the tightly upholstered couch and when I stepped through the door I thought I saw their hands first joined on the cushions in the space between them, then jerking to their laps. I stood far enough back that I wasn’t tempted to reach out and play pattycake, to slap at their folded hands or the place their hands had been resting.
The Degraw Street brownstone was unchanged, outside and in, apart from a dense, even layer of dust on the furniture and carpet and picture frames in the parlor. The air in the room swam with stirred dust, as though Matricardi and Rockaforte had arrived just a few moments before. They visited their Brooklyn shrine less often than in the past, I supposed. I wondered who drove them in from Jersey and whether they took any pains not to be seen coming here or whether they cared. Perhaps no one alive in Carroll Gardens knew them by sight anymore.
A neighborhood’s secret lords could also be Invisible Men.
“What is between you and Tony?” said Matricardi.
“I want to find Frank’s killer.” I’d already heard myself say this too many times, and meaning was leaking out of the phrase. It threatened to become a sort of moral tic: findfrank’skiller.
“Why don’t you follow Tony in this? Shouldn’t you act as one, as brothers?”
“I was there. When they took Frank. Tony-Hospitabailey!-Tony wasn’t there.”
“You’re saying then that he should follow you.”
“He shouldn’t get in my way. Essway! Wrongway!” I winced, hating to tic now, in front of them.
“You’re upset, Lionel.”
“Sure I’m upset.” Why should I confess my distrust to those I distrusted? The more Matricardi and Rockaforte spoke Tony’s name, the more certain I was they were tangled together in this somehow, and that Tony was far more familiar with The Clients than I’d been in the years since our first visit to this crypt, this mausoleum. I’d come away with a fork, he with something more. Why should I accuse one half of a conspiracy to the other? Instead I squinted and turned my head and pursed my lips, trying to avoid the obvious, finally acceded to The Clients’ power of suggestion and barked once, loudly.
“You are afflicted and we feel for you. A man shouldn’t run, and he shouldn’t woof like a dog. He should find peace.”
“Why doesn’t Tony want me looking into Frank’s murder?”
“Tony wishes this thing to be done correctly and with care. Work with him, Lionel.”
“Why do you speak for Tony?” I gritted my teeth as I spoke the words. It wasn’t actly ticcing, but I’d begun to echo The Clients’ verbal rhythms, the cloistered Ping-Pong of their diction.
Matricardi sighed and looked at Rockaforte. Rockaforte raised his eyebrows.
“Do you like this house?” said Matricardi.
I considered the dust-covered parlor, the load of ancient furnishing between the carpet and the ceiling’s scrollwork, how it all hung suspended inside the shell of the warehouse-brownstone. I felt the presence of the past, of mothers and sons, deals and understandings, one dead hand gripping another-dead hands were nested here on Degraw Street like a series of Chinese boxes. Including Frank Minna’s. There were so many ways I didn’t like it I didn’t know where to begin, except that I knew I shouldn’t allow myself to begin at all.
“It’s not a house,” I said, offering the very least of my objections. “It’s a room.”
“He says it’s a room,” said Matricardi. “Lionel, this is my mother’s house where we sit. Where you stand so full of fury it makes you like a cornered dog.”
“Somebody killed Frank.”
“Are you accusing Tony?”
“Accusatony! Excusebaloney! Funnymonopoly!” I squeezed my eyes shut to interrupt the seizure of language.
“We wish you to understand, Lionel. We regret Frank’s passing. We miss him sorely. It is a soreness in our hearts. Nothing could please us more than to see his killer torn by birds or picked apart by insects with claws. Tony should have your help in bringing that day closer. You should stand behind him.”
“What if my search brings me to Tony?” I’d let The Clients lead me to this pass in the conversation, and now there wasn’t any reason to pretend.
“The dead live in our hearts, Lionel. From there Frank will never be dislodged. But now Tony has replaced Frank in the world of the living.”
“What does that mean? You’ve replaced Frank with Tony?”
“It means you shouldn’t act against Tony. Because our wishes go with him.”
I understood now. It was Tony’s Italian apotheosis at last. I was thrilled for him.
Unless it had been this way for years without my knowing. Maybe Tony Vermonte and The Clients ran deeper than Frank Minna and The Clients ever had.