And 1055 Coney Island Avenue wasn’t any meaner than the other nasty little storefronts with which it shared common walls. The dusty, sun-faded signage wasn’t missing any more letters than the signs on the stores between which it was shouldered. The painted brick façade of the building above the shop at 1055 wasn’t in a worse state of disrepair than its neighbors. There was no greater number of chipped bricks, the paint not any uglier or more flaked or pitted. The piles of filthy snow in the gutter out in front of it were no blacker. So in these ways 1055 Coney Island Avenue was unremarkable. I didn’t know what Lids had given or promised to the guy who’d called me, but I couldn’t help thinking I’d been played for a fool, for a stupid kid desperate for an answer … any answer.
The business at 1055 was a fix-it shop. The old vacuum hoses hanging limply behind the smudged glass reminded me of the red-skinned roasted ducks in the windows of Chinatown restaurants. Suddenly, my nose filled with fragrance of garlic and ginger sizzling in hot oil. My mouth watered, but there was no duck, no ginger, no hot oil. There were only broken toasters, round-tubed TV sets, giant radios, and old-fashioned fans in the window, relics. Sun-faded paper price tags were attached to these items with little bits of bakery string. A closer inspection revealed that everything in the window was covered in a fine, downy layer of gray dust.
A cockeyed Open/Closed sign hung in the door above where the store hours had peeled off and never been replaced. The sign said the store was open, but when I pressed my face to the glass, cupping my hands around my eyes, the only sign of movement was the flickering of a fluorescent tube in a fixture above the shop counter. To my surprise, the door gave way when I pushed, and I stepped inside. A rusted bell above the door made a half-hearted attempt to announce my arrival. Instead there was a single shrill and unwelcoming blare. With it, my visions of roasted ducks and the smells of Chinese cuisine vanished. The place was worse inside than out, smelling of machine oil, mildew, and disappointment.
“What?” A man screamed at me from behind the wall in back of the front counter. When I did not answer, he shouted, “What? All right, I’m coming, already. Already, I’m coming.” He had a thick Old World accent like the old folks on the boardwalk in Brighton Beach.
When he stepped out from behind the wall, hardly more than his head reached above the counter. He was short to begin with, and his hunched shoulders and stooped posture weren’t helping any. His bald head, paradoxically freckled and pale, had a wreath of unkempt gray hair stretching from temple to temple. He had a furrowed brow and wore heavily rimmed black glasses held together by Band-Aids, with thick lenses on a nose that would have given W. C. Fields a fright. He had that kind of skin with big, ugly pores. He was dressed in pants worn shiny with age that were held up by a length of rope. Over this he had on a T-shirt so frayed and yellowed it might have disintegrated before my eyes.
“What, you picking up or dropping off? Well, you don’t got nothing in your hands, sonny boy, so give to me already the receipt.”
“I’m not here for that,” I said, my voice faltering.
“Then what, you come begging for charity? You come to sell me something? Gay avek! Go away. Whatever I had to give, those Nazi bastards already are taking from me.”
“I’m not here to ask for money or to sell you anything, mister.”
“Then what? I’m a busy man. I have to work hard to be this poor, sonny. So speak up or get out.”
“My girlfriend’s in a coma in Kings Highway Hospital,” I said, panicked. What did I know about questioning someone? I wasn’t a cop. I didn’t even know how to start. But if I thought telling him about Mindy would at least get me a little sympathy or buy me time, I thought wrong.
He crooked a gnarled finger at me. “At least she’s alive. My wife. My kids. All gone. Pfffft! Smoke out the pipe of the camp. Gone.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Save your sorrys for when they would matter. On me, they’re a waste. Besides, what has this to do with me, your girlfriend?”
“Three nights ago, she was here.”
“Here! Who was here?”
“My girlfriend, Mindy Weinstock.”
There wasn’t even a hint of recognition in his eyes.
“And what time was this when Mindy Weinstock was supposed to be in mine shop?”
“Early evening, between six and eight.”
“Sonny, the only things here at those hours are broken toasters and roaches.”
Okay, I thought, that was something, a place to start. “How about in the apartments upstairs?”
“How about them?”
“Do you own the building? Do you live upstairs? Do you know any of your neighbors? Stuff like that.”
“Look, sonny, it’s too bad from your girlfriend in the hospital, but I got no time for this stuff. I’ve got work. You wanna keep standing there, look for her fingerprints in the dust, be mine guest. But me, I got no time for nonsense.” The gnome made to head into the rear of the shop.
“How about a black guy with pink blotches on his face and hands?” I shouted.
That stopped him. He looked up at me. I thought I saw something this time, a glint maybe, behind the thick lenses of his glasses. Or maybe it was wishful thinking on my part.
“You’re talkin’ crazy now again, a schwartze with pink blotches. Gey avek before I’m calling the police already.” This time the gnome retreated behind the counter wall.
I did not move, not immediately. Although I had no idea of what I might find, I didn’t expect to get dismissed out of hand. But even if I had come to the realization that growing up in Brooklyn didn’t imbue me with a thicker skin or bless me with magical street smarts, I sensed something wasn’t right; not with the old man and not with this musty little place. Okay, sure, camp survivors had it bad. I had seen The Pawnbroker. I’d seen the vacant-eyed survivors, their tattooed forearms swinging under the summer sun as they strolled zombie-like along the boardwalk. In their shoes, I might not have been the most pleasant bastard on the planet either. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that there were things to know here. Screwed onto the countertop was a wooden business card holder that looked like a junior high shop class project. It held a few sun-yellowed cards. I took one because, if for no other reason, I was determined not to walk away empty-handed.
CHAPTER NINE
I told Aaron I needed his car to see Mindy. It wasn’t the first time I’d lied to him. It was unlikely to be the last. What my brother didn’t know was that I’d already spent two hours at Mindy’s bedside during afternoon visiting hours. Amazing how much time there is in a day when school is no longer a part of it.
I got back to the fix-it shop at around six and parked directly across Coney Island Avenue. It felt much later than six, as if night had already taken hold. That’s the thing about winter, isn’t it, how it always feels later than it is? Over the last few days I’d come to think that maybe life was like that too.
Now the flickering fluorescent light from inside the darkened shop gave it an eerie feel, like something out of a bad sci fi movie. Oh, master, look, the creature lives! I sipped my coffee, ate my bialy with cream cheese, and stared out the car window. At 6:10, the flickering stopped, the shop went completely black. Two minutes later, the hunched old man — Hyman Bergman, according to the business card I’d taken earlier — was on the street, fiddling with the lock. He walked a few paces away, stopped, turned, came back to the door, retried the door handle, and then went on his way. He limped along the street. My eyes followed him until he got into a beat-up ’63 Fairlane that was now more rust than steel. He pulled out into traffic and I quickly lost sight of him.