“You’d like a TV?” Decker asked.
“Nah,” Boruch said. “Turns your brain to rot.”
Decker smiled. The way the kid said it—just a line he’d picked up somewhere.
“Maybe that’s what he does when he wanders off,” Aaron said. “Walks around Prospect Park listening to rock music.”
Decker thought: Noam sneaking off, maybe wearing his Guns ’n’ Roses T-shirt under his traditional garb. When he was alone, like Clark Kent turning into Superman, he’d pull off his regular shirt, untuck his T-shirt, and blast his pathetic little radio.
Trying to hang out, trying to fit in.
But always looking over his shoulder, making sure no one would see him.
Decker put back the box springs and mattresses. He remade the beds, then checked the pillows. He unzipped a slipcover and felt a hard flat surface about the size of a playing card. He thought it was probably a calculator, but it turned out to be a miniature Nintendo game—Octopus. Sammy had the same game. The idea was to score as many points as you could before a tentacle squeezed you to death. He showed it to the brothers.
Boruch said, “Some of the kids at school have them. Hey, wait. Doesn’t Shmuli have this game?”
Decker nodded.
“He’s lucky.” Boruch looked at Decker with longing. “Abba won’t let me buy one, even with my own money. Says it’s a waste…which I guess it is.”
For the first time, resentment had crept into the boy’s voice.
“But if a friend brings them over,” Boruch went on, “like when Shmuli brings it over? Abba’ll let me play with it. As long as I’ve finished my schoolwork.”
Decker said, “So your abba doesn’t know that Noam has this.”
“Definitely not,” Aaron said. “Abba’s pretty strict on what we can have. But it’s not like he doesn’t like us to have fun. If we have free time, he likes us to get exercise. We have basketballs, baseballs, footballs. He even plays with us sometimes. Especially basketball.”
Slightly defensive tone. Decker said, “Well, with all you boys you must have quite a team. Noam join along?”
“Sometimes,” Boruch said.
“You know, Noam’s a little taller than me and all,” Aaron said. “But he’s not real coordinated. He’s slow.”
“He also has trouble keeping his mind on the game,” Boruch said. “I’d pass him the ball and it’s like he’d be on Mars. The basketball would bounce off his chest. Lucky he’s so big; otherwise he’d be knocked down all the time. He doesn’t play with us too much anymore. Guess it isn’t fun for him.”
“Guess not,” Decker said, thinking of his own youth. Always a head taller than anyone else, he was a natural choice for center. But like Noam, he also had weight. Lumbering across the court, it was especially embarrassing because everyone expected him to be so good. Agility was never his forte. He gave up basketball in his freshman year of high school, moved on to football. Made State All Star six months later. All he had to do was mow over the opposition—a piece of cake. At the age of sixteen, he’d been six two, one eighty-five.
He pocketed the Nintendo game. If Noam had run away, why had he taken his T-shirt but not this portable video game? Surely he didn’t forget it.
Decker thought about it for a moment.
Maybe the kid was subconsciously leaving behind clues.
Even if that wasn’t the reason, the game served the same purpose as if it had been left behind intentionally. Now Decker knew that Noam liked rock and roll and played arcade games. The shirt and the game indicated places to search.
Decker said, “I can walk you guys back to your bubbe’s now.”
Boruch stood, but Aaron didn’t move. Decker asked him what was wrong.
“I’m worried,” Aaron said. “I’m not worried like somebody kidnapped Noam. But I’m worried that he did something stupid and now he’s in some kind of trouble. He wouldn’t just not show up, unless he was in trouble.”
Decker didn’t answer.
“The way I talked about Noam,” Aaron said. “It sounds like I don’t care. But I do.”
“Of course you do.” Decker put his hand on Aaron’s shoulder. “I know you love him. Both of you do.”
Aaron sighed. “He’s still my brother….”
“You gonna find him?” Boruch asked.
“I’m going to do my best,” Decker said. But there was a queasy feeling in his gut as he spit out the words.
He walked both of the boys back, then stopped by the Lazarus house to pick up his piece.
The sun was setting. Though he didn’t know Brooklyn, he knew it contained some mean areas. He had no intention of searching for Noam in a ghetto, but there was always the possibility of getting lost. Along with his Beretta, he’d taken four clips, sixteen rounds apiece. That should hold him nicely.
10
Number-one item on the agenda: Get a good street map.
Though the sidewalks of Boro Park were populated with Jews walking home from synagogue, the streets were nearly empty—few cars, all businesses shut down for the holidays. Decker took off his yarmulke, put the photograph of Noam Levine on the seat next to him, and took off, searching for an open service station.
He found one about a half mile down, filled the tank with gas—Jonathan had left the car bone dry—and paid two seventy-five for a map of Brooklyn. He asked the gas station attendant or maybe it was the owner—the man was about fifty with a pot belly and white hair—exactly where he was. The older man scrunched watery blue eyes and answered,
“What do you mean where are you?”
It came out: Whaddeyeh mean wheh arh youse?
“You’re in Brooklyn—Boro Park.”
Boro Park was Burrow Park.
“This is still Boro Park?” Decker asked.
The attendant said, “You lost or something? Give me the numbers, I’ll tell you how to get there.”
Decker said, “So Boro Park isn’t all Jewish?”
“Well, most of it is Jewish. You lookin’ for the Jewish part?”
“No, I just came from the Jewish part,” Decker said.
The attendant said, “Funny, you don’t look Jewish.” He spasmed with laughter at his joke.
Decker waited for the man to finish, then asked, “If this isn’t Jewish Boro Park, what part is this?”
“Here you got your basic working Eyetalians, a few Puerto Ricans and Asians.” The man hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “You go that way—that’s east—you got Bay Ridge, your basic Eyetalians also. You go south, that’s Bensonhurst. What you got there is rich Eyetalians. You got relatives in Bensonhurst, no one’s gonna mess with you, hear what I’m sayin’?”
Decker said yes.
The attendant said, “You go west, you got Flatbush. Keep goin’ west, well, you don’t wanna go there, that ain’t good for nuttin’. You go north you eventually gonna hit Williamsburg. That’s them religious Jews again and lots of Puerto Ricans. We got every type of person, place, or thing here. Lots of things, let me tell you. What are you lookin’ for?”
Decker handed him the picture of Noam Levine. The attendant gave the photo a cursory glance, then handed it back to Decker.
“Never seen the kid,” he said. “Not that I’d know him if he was staring me straight in the eye. All those boys look alike to me with their Shirley Temple curls. Why would they want to do that to their boys, take the chance of turnin’ them into fags or something.”
Decker gave a noncommittal shrug. He remembered the talkative taxi driver saying that Flatbush was the main thoroughfare through Brooklyn. He asked for directions to Flatbush Avenue. He had addresses of a few arcades and movie theaters. But before he checked them out, he wanted to get a cursory feel for the city. Riding at night, alone…it helped him think.
Dusk had just about turned to night, Flatbush Avenue darkening, fading into sinister loneliness. Neons and shadows characterized the street. Every mile or so, Decker spotted groups of ski-hatted youths, convening in cloistered areas, bo
uncing on their feet, rubbing fingerless weight-lifting gloves together. Like cockroaches they sank deeper into their crevices whenever too many headlights illuminated the spot. Off the side streets were pods of homeless camped out in corners, warming their hands over trash-can fires.
As he’d done so many times before, Decker tried to place himself inside the mind and body of his quarry. This one was a fourteen-year-old boy with an ultra-religious background. If Noam was a runaway, Decker supposed part of the kid’s motivation was excitement. In a routinized world such as Boro Park, earthly sins were mighty tempting dishes.
But there was more to it than that. The interviews had painted a picture of an angry, lost boy. By running away, Noam was trying to find himself, emphasizing his schism with the community by leaving on Rosh Hashanah. An act of defiance, an act of hostility.
Noam was big physically, maybe considered a tough one in Boro Park, but he wasn’t streetwise. He would eventually fold on foreign sod. That meant, if he stayed away long enough he’d probably do something stupid—commit a minor crime such as shoplifting and get caught. The act had a two-fold purpose. It was protective—sitting in a police station was safer than being mugged in a back alley—and getting arrested would get his parents’ attention.
Running away on Rosh Hashanah. Talk about spitting in your parents’ faces. The only other day that would have elicited greater outrage would have been the Day of Atonement—Yom Kippur. All sins against God and Man were washed away on Judaism’s most holy of days. The soul cleansed of all its contaminants—but only if there was true repentance.
Maybe Noam hoped to be back home by Yom Kippur so he could repent. The trick was to find him before he self-destructed or before someone destroyed him.
As Decker headed north, the neighborhood deteriorated even further, not the kind of place where a white teenager would take refuge.
He pulled to the curb and spread the map over the seat of the car, planning his route of attack. A moment later, he heard a heavy thump on his car door. Jerking his head up, he saw three dark-skinned youths, one of them mouthing the words “Need help?” through the locked window. Decker pulled out his Beretta and laid it on his lap. He smiled, winked, and mouthed back a “No, thank you.” The young man gave him a palms out “no-problem, man” gesture; then the three backed away, doing a fade-out into blackness.
Decker sat a moment, lit a cigarette. Doing crap like this on his honeymoon, the whole situation drawing him deeper into the Levine family—a friggin mess! He jammed his unloaded Beretta into his waistband, started the car, and headed south.
Through a series of turns, he found himself in friendlier territory. Not that the area was beautiful—this would be considered a down-scale neighborhood by L.A. standards—but at least the buildings weren’t gutted.
Working-class white.
Probably your basic Eyetalians.
Time to get down to specifics.
Along Ocean Parkway, he found his first stop on the list: SID’S ARCADE—MINORS WELCOME. As good a place to start as any. He parked Jonathan’s Matador, stretched, then walked over. On the door was a hand-printed sign stating no smoking, food, or drink allowed on the premises.
He went inside.
The arcade was dark and it took a few moments for Decker’s eyes to adjust. But the assault on his ears was immediate. Bings, bangs, bongs, whistles, screeches, low-pitched wails—a cacophony created by bits and bytes. His pupils finally dilated and he was immersed in flashing lights in Day-Glo colors. The place was twenty by sixty, the walls lined with arcade machines and bisected by two rows standing back to back. At the rear were the cashier’s kiosk and a half-dozen enclosed booths containing simulated consoles of spacecraft, race cars, and submarines. There were also a couple of air-hockey boards. Decker could hear the steady chock, chock, chock of the puck caroming off the walls. Fantasyland—where a lonely kid could be something for a couple of hours.
He soon saw that two categories of adolescents populated the arcade. The Dungeons and Dragons set featuring wispy mustaches, unwashed hair, pencils in shirt pockets, and glasses with taped nosepieces. Then there were the super-coolers with slicked-back hair—also unwashed—clad in leather and denim adorned by metal chains. The D&D’ers played the machines with class, expending energy and sweat only when the heat was on. The wiseguys, on the other hand, banged on their buttons at frenetic speed, muttering constant obscenities regardless of the outcome of the game:
“I was fuckin robbed, man.”
Or
“I was fuckin hot, man.”
He glanced to his right. A monitor exploded into a thousand pinpoints of light. An electronic rendition of the Star Wars theme tooted out. That was drowned out by the chuck, chuck, pops of Centipede, the pops turning to rapid machine-gun fire as the target worm parts were blasted to oblivion.
Onward and upward.
Decker showed the picture around—first to the brainiacs, next to the leather set. The results were the same. Nobody had ever seen Noam Levine. Decker realized the snapshot was probably misleading. If Noam had fled to the outside world, the first thing he’d do was change his appearance. But he tried anyway, asking people to make allowances for the ethnic dress, saying Noam might be wearing a Guns ’n’ Roses T-shirt.
Still no luck.
After meeting with rejection, he tapped a D&D’er on the shoulder and asked if he could speak with him for a few minutes. The boy he’d chosen was a lanky pimply-faced teen with glasses and very straight teeth—an ortho job that had taken four thousand buckeroos out of Dad’s paycheck. The lanky kid looked at Decker suspiciously.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“I want to ask your opinion about something.”
The boy’s eyes went to Decker, then to his friends, then back to Decker. A slow smile spread over his lips. He said, “My opinion will cost you.”
Decker said, “I’m a cop.”
“Just kidding,” the kid announced.
“Thought so,” Decker said.
The lanky boy said, “How can I help you, Officer? As I stated before, I don’t know the boy in the picture. But I’ll be happy to assist you in any way.”
Playful mockery in the kid’s eyes—an Eddie Haskell gleam.
A low-pitched trombone slide culminated in a foghorn blare. That was followed by a human voice uttering a staccato “Shit.”
Decker started to speak, then he smiled and asked, “First, where exactly am I?”
Another boy broke into the conversation. He was around fifteen, not exactly fat but soft around the middle, with a double chin. He said, “You mean in metaphysical terms or simple physical location?”
Decker said, “I know I’m in Brooklyn south. What do you call this part of town?”
The lanky kid said, “If you’re a cop, how come you don’t know where you are?”
“I’m with the Los Angeles Police Department,” Decker said.
“That kid you’re looking for is from Los Angeles?” the lanky kid said.
“No,” Decker said. “He’s from Boro Park. Am I in Boro Park?”
“Sheepshead Bay,” said the soft kid.
“You don’t look like a Boro Parker,” said the lanky kid. “You don’t even look Jewish.”
“Are you Jewish?” Decker asked the lanky boy.
“We go to temple once a year on Yom Kippur for half a day,” the boy answered. “Does that qualify me to be an MOT?”
MOT—member of the tribe.
“Fine by me, kiddo,” Decker said.
A loud snap of a handclap.
“All right,” a voice shouted out. “All right! All right! All right!”
“That’s Marc,” the soft kid said. “He must’ve finally rescued Zelda.”
“Way to go Marc,” Decker said. “Let me ask you guys something. Suppose you wanted to run away from home. Where would you crash for the night?”
“Depends whether you’re a meaner or a beaner,” the lanky boy said.
“You want to
run the lexicon by me?” Decker said.
“A meaner is one of them,” the first boy said, pointing to the wiseguys. “A beaner is one of us.”
“A beaner not meaning a spic,” the soft boy explained. “It comes from the word bean—meaning head, as in cerebrum.”
The first boy explained, “Now, in answer to your question, because the outcome is totally dependent upon the input, you have to decide which of the characteristics best exemplifies your missing kid.”
The soft boy said, “We get the Chasids in the arcades.”
“You do?” Decker said.
“Not a lot,” the lanky kid said. “But some. They break down into two types—those who are just like us only they’re wearing black and have the side curls, and those I’d categorize as beaners wishing to be meaners. See, we have no desire to mix with those other species. But a few of the real religious kids would like to rebel. They want to be like tough guys.”
“But they’re too scared,” the soft boy said.
“So they hang around us,” the lanky boy said. “And they’re real pains in the asses, because they give us a hard time—say stupid things that they think are put-downs.”
The soft boy said, “Which category does your kid fall under?”
Decker said, “Probably the latter.”
The lanky boy took out a tissue and blew his nose. “I’ll bet he’s at one of the arcades now, trying to mix with the meaners. These places are pretty safe. Good ones like this have bouncers; they don’t like trouble.”
“Or,” the soft boy said, “there’re a bunch of all-night movie houses. If the kid could pass for seventeen, he could be sleeping in the balcony of the Cresta right now.”
Decker took out his sheet of paper and showed the kids the addresses. “Any of these places look like possibilities?”
The lanky boy studied the street numbers. “You used an old phone book, didn’t you?”
Decker didn’t answer. Instead, he opened his wallet and waved two five-dollar bills in front of their faces. He said, “Think you can get me some current addresses of safe late-night establishments the kid might go to?”
Faye Kellerman_Decker & Lazarus 04 Page 9
