Jonathan Lethem - Motherless Brooklyn

“Thirty-sixth,” said Coney as we rattled down the side street.

“What’s that mean?”

“I dunno. Something.”

“Midtown Tunnel. Queens.”

There was something comforting about this. The giant and his driver were moving onto our turf, more or less. The boroughs. Not quite Brooklyn, but it would do. We bumped along with the thickening traffic into the two dense lanes of the tunnel, the K-car safe tied up two cars ahead of us, its windows now black and glossy with reflections from the strips of lighting that laced the stained tile artery. I relaxed a bit, quit holding my breath, and squeaked out a teeth-clenched, Joker-grimacing eat me just because I could.

“Toll,” said Coney.

“What?”

“There’s a toll. On the Queens side.”

I started digging in my pockets. “How much?”

“Three-fifty, I think.”

I’d just put it together, miraculously, three bills, a quarter, a dime and three nickels, when the tunnel finished and the two lanes branched out to meet the six or seven toll booths. I balled the fare and held it out to Coney in a fist. “Don’t get stuck behind them,” I said. “Get a fast lane. Cut someone off.”

“Yeah.” Coney squinted through the windshield, trying to work an angle. As he edged to the right the K-car suddenly cut out of the flow, moving to the far left.

We both stared for a moment.

“Whuzzat?” said Coney.

“E-Z Pass,” I said. “They’ve got an E-Z Pass.”

The K-car slid into the empty E-Z Pass lane, and right through the booth. Meanwhile Coney had landed us third in line for EXACT CHANGE OR TOKEN.

“Follow them!” I said.

“I’m trying,” said Coney, plainly dazed by this turn of events. “Get over to the left!” I said. “Go through!”

“We don’t got an E-Z Pass.” Coney grinned painfully, displaying his special talent for rapid reversion to a childlike state.

“I don’t care!”

“But we-”

I started to pry at the wheel in Coney’s hands, to try and push us to the left, but it was too late by now. The spot before us opened, and Coney eased the car into place, then rolled down his window. I plopped the fare into his open palm, and he passed it over.

Pulling out of the tunnel to the right, we were suddenly in Queens, facing a tangle of indifferent streets: Vernon Boulevard, Jackson Avenue, Fifty-second Avenue. Et cetera.

The K-car was gone.

“Pull over,” I said.

Chagrined, Coney parked us on Jackson. It was perfectly dark now, though it was only seven. The lights of the Empire State and the Chrysler loomed across the river. Cars whirred past us out of the tunnel, toward the entrance to the Long Island Expressway, mocking us in their easy purposefulness. With Minna lose were nobodies, nowhere. “Eatmepass!” I said.

“They could of just been losing us,” said Coney. “I’d say they were, yes.”

“No, listen,” he said feebly. “Maybe they turned around and went back to Manhattan. Maybe we could catch them-”

“Shhh.” I listened to the earphones. “If Frank sees we’re off his tail, he might say something.”

But there was nothing to hear. The sounds of driving. Minna and the giant were sitting in perfect silence. Now I couldn’t believe that the man in the Zendo was the same as the giant-that garrulous, pretentious voice I’d heard couldn’t have shut up this long, it seemed to me. It was surprising enough that Minna wasn’t chattering, making fun of something, pointing out landmarks. Was he scared? Afraid to let on he was miked? Did he think we were still with him? Why did he want us with him anyway?

I didn’t know anything.

I made six oinking sounds.

We sat waiting.

More.

“That’s the way of a big Polish lug, I guess,” said Minna. “ Always gotta stay within sniffing distance of a pierogi.”

Then: “Urrhhf.” Like the giant had smashed him in the stomach. “Where’s Polish?” I asked Coney, lifting away one earphone.

“Wha?”

“Where around here’s Polish? Eat me pierogi lug! ”

“I dunno. It’s all Polish to me.”

“Sunnyside? Woodside? Come on, Gilbert. Work with me. He’s somewhere Polish.”

“Where’d the Pope visit?” mused Coney. It sounded like the start of a joke, but I knew Coney. He couldn’t remember jokes. “That’s Polish, right? What’s it, uh, Greenpoint?”

“Greenpoint’s Brooklyn, Gilbert,” I said, before thinking. “We’re in Queens.” Then we both turned our heads like cartoon mice spotting a cat. The Pulaski Bridge. We were a few yards from the creek separating Queens and Brooklyn, specifically Greenpoint.

It was something to do anyway. “Go,” I said.

“Keep listening,” said Coney. “We can’t just drive around Greenpoint.”

We soared across the little bridge, into the mouth of Brooklyn.

“Which way, Lionel?” said Coney, as if he thought Minna were feeding me a constant stream of instructions. I shrugged, palms up toward the roof of the Lincoln. The gesture ticcified instantly, and I repeated ieight=”0emrug, palms flapped open, grimace. Coney ignored me, scanning the streets below for a sign of the K-car, driving as slow as he could down the Brooklyn side of the Pulaski’s slope.

Then I heard something. Car doors opening, slamming, the scuff of footsteps. Minna and the giant had reached their destination. I froze in mid-tic, concentrating.

“Harry Brainum Jr.,” said Minna in his mockingest tone. “I guess we’re gonna stop in for a quick installation, huh?”

Nothing from the giant. More steps.

Who was Harry Brainum Jr.?

Meanwhile we came off the lit bridge, where the notion of a borough laid out for us, comprehensive, had been briefly indulgeable. Down instead onto McGuinness Boulevard, where at street level the dark industrial buildings were featureless and discouraging. Brooklyn is one big place, and this wasn’t our end of it.

“You know-if you can’t beat ’em, Brainum, right?” Minna went on in his needling voice. In the background I heard a car horn-they weren’t indoors yet. Just standing on the street somewhere, tantalizingly close.

Then I heard a thud, another exhalation. Minna had taken a second blow.

Then Minna again: “Hey, hey -” Some kind of struggle I couldn’t make out.

“Fucking-” said Minna, and then I heard him get hit again, lose his wind in a long, mournful sigh.

The scary thing about the giant was that he didn’t talk, didn’t even breathe heavy enough for me to hear.

“Harry Brainum Jr.,” I said to Coney. Then, afraid it sounded like a tic to him, I added, “Name mean anything to you, Gilbert?”

“Sorry?” he said slowly.

“Harry Brainum Jr.,” I repeated, furious with impatience. There were times when I felt like a bolt of static electricity communing with figures that moved through a sea of molasses.

“Sure,” he said, jerking his thumb in the direction of his window. “We just passed it.”

“What? Passed what?”

“It’s like a tool company or something. Big sign.” My breath caught. Minna was talking to us, guiding us. “Turn around.”

“What, back to Queens?”

“No, Brainum, wherever you saw that,” I said, wanting to strangle him. Or at least find his fast-forward button and push it. “They’re out of the car. Make a U-turn.”

“It’s just a block or two.”

“Well, go, then. Brain me, Junior! ”/p›

Coney made the turn, and right away there it was. HARRY BRAINUM JR. INC. STEEL SHEETS., in giant circus-poster letters on the brick wall of a two-story plant that took up a whole block of McGuinness, just short of the bridge.