The Iron Will of Shoeshine Cats

by Hesh Kestin

  “It’s not going to happen twice, fuckers!” I shouted. “First one who gets in is the first one in intensive care. Come on! Come on, you two-bit Irish—”

  “Federal Bureau of Investigation,” a loud, distinct and surprisingly androgynous voice came from the other side of the door. “FBI. Open the door, please, Mr. Newhouse. We need to talk to you.”

  I tiptoed away from the door and to the window. There, one floor below, was a black four-door Chevrolet with some sort of gold-colored seal on the side. “What does the FBI want with me?” I said to the door.

  “We’d just like to talk with you, Mr. Newhouse.”

  “Well, I just don’t want to talk with you. Go away.” I turned back to look at the mattress on the floor. In the excitement I had not seen Celeste leave the bed. Now, as I heard the sound of the shower, I realized I was naked. Whatever it was at the door I considered it might be better addressed with something other than a morning erection. “Give me a minute,” I said, throwing on clothes as though I were Cinderella and the coach was leaving in seconds. I slipped my feet, sockless, into my shoes.

  FBI maybe, but an unlikely pair.

  The woman was about thirty, medium height, wearing the kind of outfit that would be increasingly seen as females moved into the white-collar labor force, a barely feminized take on male business attire that served the same purpose—diminishing the possibility of sartorial error by reducing all possibility of originality: white blouse, gray skirt (trousers on women were just coming to be acceptable as non-casual attire) and a double-breasted blue blazer replete with brass buttons that was not quite butch enough to conceal a solidly three-dimensional front porch. Or maybe a pair of shoulder holsters. That would make sense. An FBI agent fumbling in her purse for her gun just did not seem right, and unlike males there was no way to tuck a back-up piece in an ankle rig. No makeup, large gray eyes, and short brown hair shot prematurely with silver in a pageboy that all but concealed a deep forehead, severely cut bangs pointing down to an almost non-existent nose and a mouth that got no lipstick and hardly needed any: it was a mouth made for kissing—Jeanne Moreau’s mouth in Truffaut’s Jules et Jim, which I had just seen at the Eighth Street Cinema in the Village, broad lips, flattened as if by pressure from a lover’s kiss, nothing of a smile other than availability.

  These ridiculous thoughts were immediately followed by the realization that no one was about to be kissed, especially with the other fed standing right behind the first and towering over her. He must have been six-five, a bit taller than Ira-Myra’s, but stick-thin, and taller and thinner for his hat, a blue felt porkpie that looked like nothing less than a continuation skyward of his angular face. His mouth was little more than a pucker. Even his tie was narrow. Only a pair of thick black glasses and a thin blond mustache broke the vertical thrust.

  A woman and a scarecrow were hardly what I would have expected from America’s national police force, but maybe I wasn’t worth more than these.

  “May we come in?” the woman said. “Just take a minute.”

  It was one of those questions that barely qualify as rhetorical. A rhetorical question speaks its own answer. This one did not require one. The two brushed by me as if I weren’t there.

  “Special Agent Quinones,” she said, producing a leather flap from her purse that displayed the kind of badge they used to sell in every Woolworth’s in America before Woolworth’s ceased to exist.

  “Can I see that?”

  “You can see this,” the scarecrow said, sticking his badge so close in front of my eyes I could barely focus. I eased his hand back gently. The truth is I knew as little of what an authentic FBI badge looked like as I did about why these two were here. “Special Agent Mink,” he said.

  “I always wanted to know,” I said. “What makes you guys so special—are there regular agents and you’re the special ones? Or is every one of you special? But that wouldn’t make you particularly special, would—”

  “We’re all special, Mr. Newhouse,” Quinones said. With her name came the recognition that she was some sort of westerner, New Mexico maybe, or Arizona. Possibly rural California. And there was just the hint of a Mexican accent in her voice, a kind of upswing at the end of each phrase. “And you’re special too.”

  Celeste took this occasion to walk slowly and determinedly from the bathroom wrapped in two towels, one barely covering her from chest to pubic hair and the other making up a huge turban on her head, its end trailing down her glistening backbone like the tail on a coonskin cap. When I was about nine Walt Disney had broadcast a television saga on Davy Crockett, and a whole generation of boys who had grown up in the fifties had owned polyester copies. I never had one. My friends did. But I could do a mean imitation of Fess Parker, the actor who played the so-called king of the wild frontier: “I’m half-horse, half-alligator and a little attached with snapping turtle. I’ve got the fastest horse, the prettiest sister, the surest rifle and the ugliest dog in Texas. My father can lick any man in Kentucky... and I can lick my father!” I had to keep myself from doing it now. Celeste stooped silently to the floor at the foot of the bed, gathered up her clothes and then turned demurely back to the bathroom, her eyes unwaveringly straight ahead.

  “Deaf mute,” I said. “What can I do for you?”

  “Are you Russell E. Newhouse?” Quinones asked.

  “Probably.”

  “And do you know a person whose name is Shushan Cats, alias Shoeshine Cats, alias Kid Yid, alias—” Quinones looked at me. “Do you want the whole list? It’s long.”

  “I’ve met him.”

  “Is that all?”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning, is that all, that you’ve met him? Or is he more than someone you’ve met?”

  “Social stuff. A drink. Meal.”

  The designated bad cop now jumped in. “Mr. Newhouse, lying to a federal agent is a felony, as is conspiring to delay or hinder the apprehension of a fugitive from justice. Are you aware of this?”

  “Did you two say two minutes?” I said. “Because two minutes is up.”

  Quinones looked peeved, as if she had been through this kind of thing before with her partner—it was hard not to like her for it. Whether real or not, she made a convincing good cop. “Mr. Newhouse, we can be out of your hair in a very short while, but we do need your cooperation.”

  “Which means that if I don’t cooperate you’ll be in my hair for a long while, is that what you’re saying?”

  “Not at all,” Quinones said. “The Bureau is interested in learning the whereabouts of Mr. Cats. We’d be grateful for any assistance you can offer in this regard.”

  Re-enter bad cop: “And not happy if we feel you’re attempting to—”

  “Do you two always keep the same roles,” I asked as sweetly as I could. “Or do you switch off? Personally I think the threatening female is the more effective, because it’s kind of reverse casting.”

  “Mr. Newhouse...”

  “Yes, Special Agent Quinones.”

  “Can I call you Russell?”

  “Can you call me Russell?” I let this simmer for a moment. “Frankly, that would be a bad idea. Can you instead get to the point and then, if it’s not too much trouble, leave? Maybe you haven’t noticed, but I’ve got a guest.”

  “Are you some kind of wise guy?”

  “Yes, Special Agent Mink. I am. I’m also an American citizen with certain rights, the first of which is the right to ask you to leave.” I smiled. “Special Agent Quinones can stay. I’ll even give her coffee.”

  Quinones flashed me a smile that was pure Jeanne Moreau, or at least Jeanne Moreau adulterated with a little Rita Moreno, who was a knock-out in the film version of West Side Story, which had been released the year before. “That’s a no-no, Mr. Newhouse. Special agents are special because we stick together.”

  “You’re not missing much on the coffee,” I said, and reached for the door.

  Before I could get to the knob the scarecrow’s bony hand
was on my arm, gripping my bicep like a plumber’s wrench. “I’m giving you fair warning, Newhouse. Screw with us and we’ll screw with you. We want to know where your friend Cats has got himself to. We have reason to believe you know.”

  “What reason?”

  “Never mind that, kid. To date you have no criminal record. You want to keep it that way, learn to play ball.”

  I peeled the man’s hand from my arm. “You won’t believe this, but I really suck at sports.”

  When they left—to make sure I watched the black Chevy Biscayne pull out and head down Eastern Parkway—I called the Westbury. No one answered in Shushan’s suite. I left my number with the desk. Beyond that, I had no idea where to look. Then I thought of someone. Information gave me an office number for Terri Cats, PhD, on East Seventy-Third. What I got was an answering service, where I convinced the operator I was a patient with an emergency. I called the new number. Silence.

  “Terri,” I said as slowly and clearly as I could, “This is Russell Newhouse. We met at your brother’s. I’m calling because I just got a visit from a couple of federal agents looking for Shushan. I tried to get in touch with him to let him know but—”

  A click. “What the fuck is this?”

  “I just had a visit—”

  “I heard that,” Terri said. “I am not the address you want. If you’re looking for Shushan please deal with him directly. I’m his sister, not his goddamn secretary. One more thing, lover boy—”

  “I really think he should—”

  “You call me again at this number and I will make it my business to be very unpleasant. You think Shushan can be unpleasant?”

  “I heard.”

  “Don’t talk, just listen. If you think Shushan can be unpleasant, he’s nothing compared to me. This number is for people with real emergencies. Call it again and I can guarantee you will be even more unhappy than just knowing Shushan will make you, and if you don’t know yet how bad that can be you’re a fool as well as a vain young prick. Do you understand me, lover?”

  “I still think—”

  “You’re not thinking—you’re reacting. I can’t help you. Where you are, no one can help you. Now leave me alone.”

  The click must have been audible across the room, because Celeste started like a deer. She was fully dressed, eyes made up, and slipping into her coat, a navy pea-jacket, that year’s statement of resolute androgyny. “I really have to go,” she said. “Whatever it is you did, I don’t want to know about it. And don’t call me, Russ. I’ll call you.” She kissed me chastely on the cheek and left. I hadn’t even had time to bar the door again when there was a knock. I looked through the peep-hole.

  “Here,” she said, and handed me a key.

  There it was. In the space of five minutes three females had, in one form or another, turned me down cold. The feeling of rejection was so complete I considered making it go away by lighting a huge joint and pretending to think about the meaning of it all, but I knew enough to know that this would turn into a massive giggle, a deep shrug, the munchies and then a nap. I lit a Lucky instead, then another, then a third, then walked out into the clear morning air of Eastern Parkway, the Hasidic Jews who had colonized the place since the early fifties hurrying to prayers, the Rastafarians ambling along in individual portable clouds of ganj, and on the way to the newsstand on the corner of Bedford Avenue managed, with absolutely no malice aforethought or after, to get arrested.

  14.

  Wherever the two characters from the FBI had disappeared to, I wasn’t halfway down the block when I realized that I was being followed, by someone else.

  Eastern Parkway is one of New York City’s few truly beautiful boulevards. At least in conception. From its beginnings at Grand Army Plaza, where a copy of the Arc de Triomphe faces the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library and the Brooklyn Museum (in these I had received my real education—the public schools were useless) to where it peters out after several miles into the slums of Brownsville, it is a broad tree-lined thoroughfare divided into three: four center lanes going east and west, and two parallel service roads separated from the main drag by pedestrian islands. Out of the corner of my eye I could see I was being followed by a vehicle creeping slowly down the service road as I walked east: a banged up forest-green sedan with darkened windows—an unmarked police car. To say this was eerie is a little bit like saying I had had a mildly enervating morning. Here I was, a lone pedestrian, and two tons of Dodge Dart was moving just behind my left shoulder at a pace that could not have exceeded three miles an hour. I tried not to look back, figuring that if I were lucky I could duck into an apartment house, go out the back door and disappear in the alleys. This was Brooklyn, and I knew Brooklyn. But my search for an escape route was interrupted by a single baritone horn blowing somewhere behind me and then a second and then others until the noise was not so much deafening as detonating. The single lane of the service road available to traffic—on either side there were parked cars—had become a slow-motion parade with an unmarked police car leading a line of vehicles a block long and growing. But as soon as an arm came out of the cop car and fixed a magnetized gumball machine to the roof, the honking died down except for a few unaware drivers way at the end of the line. In a moment they figured it out as well. The unmarked car’s siren came on and the window rolled down.

  At first I didn’t make the connection. Then I recognized the bald head. It was Cohen, who had appeared with his partner at the Westbury. “Hey, kid. C’mere!”

  This was not an invitation. I walked over to the car. “Hi, detective. Nice seeing you again.” I bent to see the driver. “You too, Detective Kennedy. What a coincidence. I live just up the street.”

  “We know that, dummy,” Cohen said, not unfriendly. “We been tailing you since you walked out the door. Don’t you notice nothing?”

  “I suspected there was a parade in the neighborhood,” I said. “How can I help you gentlemen?”

  A horn sounded about six cars down. Cohen got out of the car, his bald head shining in the mid-morning sun like a dented helmet, and held up a badge. The horn bleeped to an ignominious burp. “We don’t want you to take this personal, kid, but we got to do our job.”

  I thought, How nice that you have one. If I had one I’d probably do it too. But the last job I’d had was emptying my semen from a condom into a specimen jar while an array of female soon-to-be strangers wondered what I was doing in the bathroom when any self-respecting male would be in just-come heaven on the way to a nap. Maybe all work was like that, less pleasant perhaps, but in the end full of adult obligation. Looked at it this way, I was merely Detective Cohen’s fetid specimen.

  If so, he proceeded to pour me into a jar. As a first step I had to be handcuffed, and without anyone reading me my rights. Though in the same year Ernest Miranda was arrested and convicted in the case that would three years later cause the Supreme Court to issue its Miranda decision, the only thing Detective Kennedy told me was, “Watch your head getting in the door.”

  “You gentlemen going to tell me what’s going on?” I said from the back of the car. The seats were torn, the vinyl backs of the front seats scuffed, and there were brown stains on the colorless carpets that were doing a credible imitation of dried blood. If this was the vehicle, I wondered what the destination would be like. “I thought we were friends.”

  “Oh, we are,” Kennedy said from behind the wheel, fully turning around in his seat while barreling down Eastern Parkway at fifty miles an hour. “If we weren’t you’d be fucking unconscious right now.” We blew through a red light. “Say you’re some nigger,” Kennedy said conversationally. “I never cuff a nigger without I first tune him up a little. Nothing serious. Usually body blows.”

  “Unless he resists,” Cohen noted.

  “That is correct. Like if he says one fucking word, like What I do? Or It be raining out.”

  “Or a synonym for feces.”

  “In either one or two syllables,” Kennedy said. “But yo
u didn’t make no trouble, Russell. You’re a good kid. We got a relationship.”

  “These cuffs are a little tight,” I said, watching Brooklyn freely going about its business as we sailed through traffic as if there was a siren going. There wasn’t. Kennedy simply drove as though there was. With nothing to hold on to but my other hand, I was being tossed around on the back seat like a steel sphere in a pinball machine. A good thing I hadn’t eaten—it would have added to the decor. “I mean, since we have a relationship.”

  Cohen turned around to smile at me while I looked past his five o’clock shadow—it would not be five o’clock for eight hours—at a tsunami of oncoming cars, trucks and scared pedestrians. “We got a relationship, but that’s different from friends. You want to be friends you got to help us find a mutual friend, a friend we got in common. You know who I mean.” Kennedy turned around as well, grinned, then turned back to the wheel just in time to avoid smashing into the back of a truck with a huge fish painted on its rear. Underneath was lettered: Eat fish, live longer.

  To say that this legend was immediately engraved in my memory is to understate the case. I thought we would go through that sign and enter into an icy world of fresh fish, but instead felt my innards collapse forward as we braked. “No,” I said. “Who do you mean?”

  Kennedy turned back again, flashing dimly vegetal teeth that seemed to have been installed to match his green eyes, a divine tic of exterior decoration. “Don’t fuck with us, kid. We’re trying to help you.”

  While said assistance was being executed I tried to figure out what was going on. Everybody was looking for Shushan—even I was looking for him—but why did everyone think I knew where he was? In an interrogation room in the 73rd Precinct, which looked like it had not been cleaned since the day it was built a hundred years before, I had the pleasure of discussing this with Detectives Cohen and Kennedy in considerable depth. Kennedy was the designated bad cop—didn’t police have an alternative methodology?—with Cohen the sympathetic one, probably because we were both hebes.