"No."

"No. Not here. That isn't right."

"No."

"Name? Who's calling, sir?"

I took out one of Minna's cards. "Frank Minna," I said. The name came easily, and I didn't feel any need to distort it the way I would my own.

The band of doormen around me loosened at the sight of a business card. I'd shown a first glimmer of legitimacy. They were a top grade of doorman, finely tuned, factoring vigilance against hair-trigger sycophantic instincts.

"Expected?"

"Sorry?"

"Expected by the party in question? Appointment? Name? Contact?"

"Dropping in." "Hmmm."

"No."

"No."

Another minute correction ensued. They bunched closer. Minna's card disappeared.

"There may be some confusion."

"Yes."

"Probably there is."

"Wrong building completely."

"Should there be a destination for a message, what would a message be?"

"On the chance that the destination in question is this one. You understand, sir."

"Yes."

"Yes."

"No message," I said. I tapped the nearest doorman's suit breast. He darted back, scowling. But they were penguins now. I had to touch them all. I reached for the next, the tallest, tried to high-five his shoulder and just grazed it. The circle loosened around me again as I spun. They might have thought I was staining them with invisible swatches of blacklight paint for future identification or planting electronic bugs or just plain old spreading cooties, from the way they jumped.

"No."

"Look out."

"Can't have this."

"Can't have this here."

"Out."

Then two of them had me by the elbows, and I was steered out onto the sidewalk.

[image]0em"height="1em"> I took a stroll around the block, just to glean what I could from the north face of the building. I was shadowed by the curb man, of course, but I didn't mind. The staff entrance smelled of a private dry-cleaning service, and the disposal bins showed signs of bulk food orders, perhaps an in-house grocery. I wondered if the building housed a private chef, too. I thought about poking my head in to see but the curb man was muttering tensely into a walkie-talkie, and I figured I'd probably better distance myself. I waved good-bye and he waved back involuntarily-everyone's a little ticcish that way sometimes.

Between bites of hot dog and gulps of papaya juice I dialed the Garbage Cop's office. The Papaya Czar on Eighty-sixth Street and Third Avenue is my kind of place-bright orange and yellow signs pasted on every available surface screaming, PAPAYA IS GOD'S GREATEST GIFT TO MAN'S HEALTH! OUR FRANKFURTERS ARE THE WORKING MAN'S FILET MIGNON! WE'RE POLITE NEW YORKERS, WE SUPPORT MAYOR GIULIANI! PAPAYA IS GOD'S GREATEST GIFT TO MAN'S HEALTH! OUR FRANKFURTERS ARE THE WORKING MAN'S FILET MIGNON! WE'RE POLITE NEW YORKERS, WE SUPPORT MAYOR GIULIANI! And so on. Papaya Czar's walls are so layered with language that I find myself immediately calmed inside their doors, as though I've stepped into a model interior of my own skull. And so on. Papaya Czar's walls are so layered with language that I find myself immediately calmed inside their doors, as though I've stepped into a model interior of my own skull.

I washed down the tangy nubbin of the first dog while the phone rang. Papaya Czar's product did emulate an expensive steak's melting-in-your-mouthiness, frankfurters apparently skinless and neither bun nor dog crisped in the cooking, so they slid together into hot-dog cream on the tongue. These virtues could be taken in excess and leave one craving the greater surface tension of a Nathan's dog, but I was in the mood for the Czar's today. I had four more laid out in a neat row on the counter where I sat, each with a trim line of yellow mustard for an exclamation-five was still my angel. was still my angel.

As for papaya itself, I might as well be drinking truffula seed nectar or gryphon milk, for all I knew-I'd never encountered the fruit in any form except the Czar's chalky beverage.

"Sanitation Inspector Loomis," answered the Garbage Cop.

"Listen, Loomis. I'm working on this Gilbert thing." I knew I needed to tie it in to his friend's plight to keep him focused. In fact, Gilbert was now the furthest thing from my mind. "I need you to pull up some information for me."

"That you, Lionel?"

"Yeah. Listen. Ten-three-oh Park Avenue. Write that down. I need some records on the building, management company, head of the board, whatever you can find out. See if any names you recognize pop up."

"Recognize from where?"

"From, uh, around the neighborhood." I was thinking Frank Minna Frank Minna, but I didn't want to say it. "Oh, one in particular. Fujisaki. It's Japanese."

"I don't know any Fujisaki from around the neighborhood."

"Just look up the records, Loomis. Call me back when you get something."

"Call you back where?"

I'd gotten the beeper and the cell phone mixed up. I was collecting other people's electronics. In fact, I didn't know the number of the phone I'd borrowed from the doorman in sunglasses. I wondered for the first time who I'd find myself talking to if I answered the incoming calls.

"Forget it," I said. "You've still got Minna's beeper number?"

"Sure."

"Use that. I'll call you."

"When do we bail out Gilbert?"

"I'm working on it. Listen, Loomis, I'd better go. Get back to me, all right?"

"Sure thing, Lionel. And, buddy?"

"What?"

"Good stature, man," said Loomis. "You're holding up great." "Uh, thanks Loomis." I ended the call, put the cell phone back into my jacket pocket.

"Kee-rist," said a man sitting on my right. He was a guy in his forties. He wore a suit. As Minna said more than once, in New York any chucklehead can wear a suit. Satisfied he wasn't a doorman, I ignored him, worked on dog number three.

"I was in this restaurant in L.A.," he started. "Great place, million-dollar place. All the food is tall, you know what I mean? Tall food? There's this couple at a table, both of them talking on fucking cell phones, just like you got there. Two different conversations through the whole meal, yakking all over each other, what Cindy Cindy said, get away for the said, get away for the weekend weekend, gotta work on my game game, the whole nine yards. You couldn't hear yourself think over the racket."

I finished dog three in five evenly spaced bites, licked the mustard off my thumb tip, and picked up number four.

"I thought L.A., fair enough. Chalk it up. You can't expect any different. So couple months ago I'm trying to impress a client, take him to Balthazar, you know, downtown? Million-dollar place, take it from me. Tall food, gangly gangly food. So what do I see but a couple of bozos at the bar talking on cell phones. My water's getting hot, but I figure, bar, fair enough, that's showing decent respect. Adjust my standards, whatever. So we get a table after waiting fifteen fucking minutes, sit down and my client's phone rings, he takes it out at the table! Guy I was with! Sits there yakking! Ten, fifteen minutes!" food. So what do I see but a couple of bozos at the bar talking on cell phones. My water's getting hot, but I figure, bar, fair enough, that's showing decent respect. Adjust my standards, whatever. So we get a table after waiting fifteen fucking minutes, sit down and my client's phone rings, he takes it out at the table! Guy I was with! Sits there yakking! Ten, fifteen minutes!"

I enjoyed dog four in Zen-like calm and silence, practicing for my coming zazen zazen.

"Never thought I'd see it in here, though. Fucking California, Balthazar, whatever, all these guys with crap in their hair and million-dollar wristwatches like Dick Tracy I guess I gotta adjust my standards to the modern universe but I thought at the very least I could sit here eat a fucking hot dog without listeing to yak yak yak."

I'd apportioned a fifth of my papaya juice for rinsing down the last dog. Suddenly impatient to leave, I stuffed a wad of napkins in my jacket pocket and took the dog and the drink in hand and headed back out into the bright cold day.

"Fucking people talking to themselves in a public place like they got some kind of illness!"

The beeper went off just as I got to the car. I drew it out for a look: another unfamiliar number in 718. I got into the car and called from the cell phone, ready to be irritated with Loomis.

"DickTracyphone," I said into the mouthpiece. I said into the mouthpiece.

"This is Matricardi and Rockaforte," went a gravelly voice. Rockaforte. Though I'd heard them speak just two or three times in fifteen years, I would have known his voice anywhere.

Through the windshield I viewed Eighty-third Street, midday, November. A couple of women in expensive coats mimed a Manhattan conversation for my benefit, trying to persuade me of their reality. On the line, though, I heard an old man's breathing, and what I saw through the windshield wasn't real at all.

I considered that I was answering Minna's beeper. Did they know he was dead? Would I have to deliver the news to The Clients? I felt my throat constrict, instantly throbbing with fear and language.

"Speak to me," rasped Rockaforte.

"Larval Pushbug," I said softly, trying to offer my name. Did The Clients even know it? "Papaya Pissbag." I was tic-gripped, helpless. "NotMinna," I said at last. "NotFrank. Frank'sdead."

"We know, Lionel," said Rockaforte.

"Who told you?" I whispered, controlling a bark.

"Things don't escape," he said. He paused, breathed, went on. "We're very sorry for you in this time."

"You found out from Tony?"

"We found out. We find out what we need. We learn."

But do you kill? I wanted to ask. I wanted to ask. Do you command a Polish giant? Do you command a Polish giant?

"We're concerned for you," he said. "The information is that you are running, going here and there, unable to sit still. We hear this, and it concerns."

"What information?"

"And that Julia has left her home in this time of mourning. That nobody knows where she has gone unless it is you."

"Nojulia, nobody, nobodyknows."

"You stll suffer. We see this and we suffer as well."

This was somewhat obscure to me, but I wasn't going to ask.

"We wish to speak with you, Lionel. Will you come and talk to us?"

"We're talking now," I breathed.

"We wish to see you standing before us. It's important in this time of pain. Come see us, Lionel."

"Where? New Jersey?" Heart racing, I allowed soothing permutations to course through my brain: Garden state bricko and stuckface garbage face grippo and suckfast garter snake ticc-o and circus Garden state bricko and stuckface garbage face grippo and suckfast garter snake ticc-o and circus. My lips rustled at the phone, nearly giving the words breath.

"We're in the Brooklyn house," he said. "Come."

"Scarface! Cigarfish!"

"What's got you running, Lionel?"

"Tony. You've been talking to Tony. He said I'm running. I'm not running."

"You sound running."

"I'm looking for the killer. Tony's trying to stop me, I think."

"You have a problem with Tony?"

"I don't trust him. He's acting-Stuccotash!-he's acting strangely."

"Let me speak," came a voice in the background of the call. Rockaforte's voice was replaced with Matricardi's: higher, more mellifluous, a single-malt whiskey instead of Dewar's.

"What's wrong with Tony?" said Matricardi. "You don't trust him in this matter?"

"I don't trust him," I repeated dumbly. I thought about ending the call. Again I consulted my other senses: I was in the sunshine in Manhattan in an L&L vehicle talking on a doorman's cell phone. I could discard Minna's beeper, forget about the call, go anywhere. The Clients were like players in a dream. They shouldn't have been able to touch me with their ancient, ethereal voices. But I couldn't bring myself to hang up on them.

"Come to us," said Matricardi. "We'll talk. Tony doesn't have to be there."

"Forgettaphone."

"You remember our place? Degraw Street. You know where?"

"Of course."

"Come. Honor us in this time of disappointment and regret. We'll talk without Tony. What's wrong we'll straighten."

[image]

While I considered what to do I used the doormen's phone again, called information and got the number of the Daily News' Daily News' obituary page and bought a notice for Minna. I put in on a credit card of Minna's to which he'd added my name. He had to pay for his own notice, but I knew he'd have wanted it, considered it fifty bucks well spent. He was always an avid reader of the obituaries, studying them each morning in the L&L office like a tip sheet, a chance for him to pick up or work an angle. The woman on the line did it all by rote, and so did I: billing information, name of deceased, dates, survivors, until we got to the part where I gave out a line or two about who Minna was supposed to have been. obituary page and bought a notice for Minna. I put in on a credit card of Minna's to which he'd added my name. He had to pay for his own notice, but I knew he'd have wanted it, considered it fifty bucks well spent. He was always an avid reader of the obituaries, studying them each morning in the L&L office like a tip sheet, a chance for him to pick up or work an angle. The woman on the line did it all by rote, and so did I: billing information, name of deceased, dates, survivors, until we got to the part where I gave out a line or two about who Minna was supposed to have been.

"Beloved something," said the woman, not unkindly. "It's usually Beloved something."