Brad Parks - The Good Cop

The guy pointed out the door and vaguely to the left, so that’s the direction I took. I reached the end of the building without seeing anything obvious, just a narrow alleyway. It was far cleaner than most Newark alleys-spotless, actually-which really got me suspicious. I hoped Tee remembered that I had a cat who depended on me as his sole means of support.

I turned and, midway down the alley, found a meshed steel door, the kind that served as a superstrength screen for another door inside it. I pulled on the screen, but it was bolted solid. A security camera, attached to the side of the building about fifteen feet up, looked down on me.

There was no knocking on a door like this. But I also couldn’t see any other way in. I studied the door frame, the door itself, and saw nothing obvious. Was I supposed to stand there until someone saw me on the camera?

Then I found it, just to the left of the frame: a small, recessed doorbell button, practically camouflaged because it had been painted the same cream color as the concrete around it.

I pressed the button and waited. Nothing happened. I pressed again. Still nothing. I was beginning to think it was broken-and there was no way into this hulk of a building-when I pressed the button a third time.

Then I heard a metallic voice: “Keep your shirt on, keep your shirt on. What are you, dying or something?”

The voice sounded … Jewish? Were there still Jews left in Newark? I thought they all left a half-century ago. I couldn’t even tell where the sound was coming from. My head swiveled in every direction.

“Over here, over here,” the voice said.

This time I was able to place it as coming from the camera, which had a small speaker.

“Oh, hi,” I said, feeling weird because, to anyone who walked by, it looked like I was talking to a wall.

“You just gonna stand there all day, looking like a putz? What do you want?”

“I’m … I’m the guy Tee sent.”

More faintly, like he didn’t know I could still hear him, the voice asked, “What did he say?” Then another guy-who also sounded like an older Jewish man-replied, “He said he was the guy Tee sent. The boots. The boots.”

“Oh, yeah,” the voice said, returning to its previous volume. “You here about the boots?”

“That’s right.”

“Why didn’t you say so? You think I’m a mind reader or something? Hang on, hang on.”

I waited another moment, until the door was opened by a granite block of a black man who, I assumed, was not the owner of the voice I heard on the speaker. I followed him down an unadorned, windowless hallway until we reached another door, where he punched in a numeric code.

The door opened, and suddenly I felt like I was in a chaotic, mismatched Macy’s. It was a large, open space filled with merchandise, loosely organized by category: luggage to the immediate left, cookery and housewares straight on, hardware beyond that, clothing and footwear to the right, electronics in the back left. The only thing missing was the perfume section.

“What … what is all this?” I asked, but my granite-block guide was not a talker.

I heard a pleasant dinging sound and turned to see two men appearing out of a freight elevator. The first had on yellow-tinted glasses, a dark yellow shirt with the top three buttons undone, light yellow slacks, and white slip-on shoes that reminded me of something a nurse would have worn forty years ago. His saggy skin was deeply tanned, even though it was March. His jewelry-a necklace, multiple bracelets, and rings on several digits, including both pinkies-was all yellow gold. His hair, what little of it there was, had been dyed blond and was gelled back. He looked like a wrinkled human banana and walked like the only rooster in a hen house.

The second man was slump-shouldered and appropriately pale for the season. He wore light gray pants and a blue cardigan sweater over a white oxford shirt, which was buttoned all the way to the top. He had no jewelry. His hair was its natural gray. He walked like a man who had lost every bet he ever placed.

The man in yellow said, “I’m Bernie. Everyone calls me Uncle Bernie. This is my brother Gene. Which one of us do you think is older?”

Both guys were at least seventy, though it was hard to tell beyond that. Either one of them could have been 138 for all I knew. If he had asked me who was older, him or Methuselah, I still wouldn’t have been able to answer.

“I have … I have no idea,” I said.

“Come on, guess.”

“He’s older,” I said, pointing at Gene, if only because I could tell that was what Uncle Bernie wanted to hear.

“See? That’s what everyone thinks, Gene! You look like a shlamazel. You’re not gonna get any tail at the bar dressing like that.”

I suspected both of these guys were a bit beyond their bar-cruising years-unless you were talking about the salad bar at an assisted living facility-but I at least appreciated his spirit.

“Anyhow, I know you didn’t come here to admire my good looks,” he said. “C’mon. Let’s go.”

* * *

Uncle Bernie led me through some racks of clothing toward a footwear section that would challenge a Nine West.

“You sure you don’t need some pots and pans?” Uncle Bernie asked me on the way back. “I just got some new All-Clad. That’s top of the line, All-Clad. The best. The best. ”

“No thanks.”

“What about a TV? Samsung. Sony. Those Japs make a good TV now. Fella like you, I bet you like sports, right? Me? I like the ponies. I go to the track. I place a bet. I take a little nap in the sun. It’s very relaxing. But you young guys? You all like the football and the basketball. Need a good TV for that, am I right? How about a new high-def?”

“That’s okay.”

“Boots,” Gene reminded Bernie. “He came for the boots, remember?”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m just talking here. What, you think I’m some kind of goyishe kop? ”

“That’s Yiddish for ‘stupid,’” Gene translated.

“Okay, here we are,” Bernie said as we arrived at a series of wire racks, filled from top to bottom with shoe boxes. “What size are you? Ten? Eleven? You’re so tall, I bet you’re eleven.”

“Yeah, eleven works,” I said.

“Okay, okay, where are we … boots, boots,” Bernie said, pawing through some boxes. “Here we go. Timberlands. Excellent company, Timberland. They make a fine product and they stand behind it a hundred percent, a thousand percent. Now these? These are the top of the line.”

He pulled out a pair of work boots and continued: “These are from their premium collection. Steel toe. Waterproof. Eight-inch upper-that’s two inches more than their usual. You wear these boots, people say, ‘Hey, look at that feinshmecker !’”

“That’s Yiddish for someone who has good taste,” Gene interjected.

“Now, you get these boots retail for one fifty, one sixty, even on sale. You? You’re a friend of Tee’s-as far as I’m concerned, you’re mishpokhe. I give ’em to you for a hundred even. We good?”

I was so stunned by everything I was seeing-much less by what a mishpokhe was-I had to slow down and make sense out of it. “I’m sorry, Uncle Bernie, I just have to know, what is all this? Where did this come from?”

“What do you mean, where did this come from? You think I’m back here tanning leather all day? It came from the manufacturer.”

“No, I’m just asking … I’m sorry, are you guys some kind of fence or something?”

Bernie recoiled, looking genuinely offended. “Fence? Fence! A broch! My mother would rise from the grave and cuff me behind the ear if I stole so much as a lump of sugar! A fence! Shame on you.”