The account of the Storyteller of Shimokitazawa continues in Park Slope, Brooklyn: The Sock Man
Two detectives, one a Sufi mystical Muslim and the other a Zen Buddhist, find themselves together searching for a criminal who has murdered a number of speleologists inside caves of London and Tokyo respectively. The criminal whose name is Bertrand Folville eludes the detectives in Tokyo (read Part 1 in Issue 46) and escapes to the seedy streets of Park Slope, Brooklyn…
The two detectives realized that they had to go to the caves north of Tokyo where the Hyakuana tombs are located. There, they found the dead bodies of two speleologists. An avalanche of rocks had fallen on them. They were members of the French Federation of Speleology. One of them, Olivier Gaultier was related to Eduard- Alfred Martel, the father of modern speleology. Olivier’s deceased partner, Vincent Roux,was a well-known caver. He had no academic credentials in the field, but he had created an impressive cave cartography of the Cloaca Maxima in Rome.
Detective Nishiyama asked de Ockam if he had seen the drawing on the wall next to the dead bodies. De Ockam said he had. The drawing was of eight apples. Two of them had been erased. They immediately realized that the apple referred to New York City. There were now six speleologists alive and one of them was the criminal. The walls of the cave also had an “enso” symbol. After making arrangements with New York City Police Department, they flew to New York where they met detective Éamon Borchard de Valera who gave them tips about the Park Slope underworld, including Jackie’s bar.
During the flight from Tokyo to NYC the two detectives learned that they were both avid readers of detective stories. They pondered about the meaning of good and evil and discussed the meaning of evil as far as: Moriarty from the Final problem, Barabbas from the Jew from Malta, Claudius from Hamlet, Mr. Kurtz from the Heart of Darkness. They also discussed Yoji Shimadas and his book, The Tokyo Zodiac Murders. Both agreed that deductive reasoning would always lead to a logical solution. Death and the Compass by Borges proved otherwise, said Nishiyama. The end of Borges’ story always vexed him. De Ockam also confessed that he was autistic. He told Nishiyama that he used words he only understood. Words like: goree, shomping kot, shalupu, peeku, pumpy, bumpy, beeku. Shomping kot, for instance, was a word meant to re-create a situation, to make an arrest or to confuse or distract.
Jackie’s bar in Park Slope was out of step with the times and the changing neighborhood. The bar’s patrons also knew this. One of them was Docteur Edouard Colson, an eminent French scholar who had been deported to the United States. His crime was exposing in Les Temps Modernes that the French government was spying on its citizens. He also accused the French government of making Paris a Disneyworld for tourists. His punishment was expulsion from France, and they condemned him to sell baguettes for the rest of his life in one of the French cafes in Park Slope. The doctor acquiesced without complaint. On his free days he was allowed by the DCRI (French police) to go to Jackie’s bar, where he would sit with a bucket of a dozen “pony” beers that were on sale for ten dollars. As part of his sentence, he wasn’t allowed to attend what the neighborhood called “nice” restaurants, like Café Dada, Al Di La, Convivium, Fonda, Talde, Applewood, Stone Park Café, or Palo Santo. McDonald’s was acceptable and so was Le Pain Quotidien, where he was allowed to eat out on weekends, including Bastille day. On those days he wrote a satire (his vindication) to describe the people he saw moving to Park Slope. It was titled the “Trust Fund Babies and their Search for the Perfect Brie and Baguette.” His satire was also about changes happening in Paris where his beloved café, Les Deux Magots, had been hijacked by tourists.
Roberto Grimaldi was also another regular at Jackie’s. Roberto was a tall man who had an “intellectual” look about him. He was not an intellectual even though he frequently carried a book along with him. He was a former rodeo clown in Monaco, but Roberto had illusions about being a gigolo in New York City. Now in Brooklyn, he thought being a gigolo would help him escape from what he called “a rat’s life.” Born in Monaco, he never progressed beyond being a petty thief. At Jackie’s he kept his past to himself and dreamed about a wealthy American woman who would help him get a green card to a better life. The regulars at Jackie’s listened to him but never understood the difference between Monaco and Morocco. To make things worse, Docteur Edouard called Monaco a big Atlantic City with yachts. Roberto’s dates usually ended with him sitting alone at Jackie’s or eating a burger at 4 a.m. at 7th Avenue Donuts & Luncheonette.
Both detectives walked down 5th Avenue and found Jackie’s. This is what the detectives saw at the bar: Docteur Edouard was talking to Roberto. A woman called Stacy was sitting holding hands with a man named Peter. Both of them had scars in their faces and looked uncomfortable when they noticed the two detectives. The regulars sitting at the bar counter had names like Shane, Steve, Justin, Pat, Alma, Finnette, Sophia, Luisa . . .there was also a woman sitting alone named Hanna who appeared to be rehearsing for a play. A Mexican man was also drinking a beer and a shot of tequila at the same time. His name was Mictlantecuhtli. People at the bar called him Miguel. According to rumors, Miguel never talked because he lost his tongue in a knife fight back in his native Tlaxcala. A woman named Kristin was singing a Latin song titled “Sali Porque Sali.” A bartender, whose name was Cristobal Queens, had a few fingers missing, looked at the detectives, and spat on the floor. He asked them in a hostile voice what they wanted. De Ockam asked for a shot of whisky, and Nishiyama asked for a Pony beer. They sat down next to a table where two men were playing chess. One was Jason Mavromoustafakis-Banakas—The Sock Man—but was also called a techie for a series of cloud computing thefts he had committed. For that, he had spent thirty years in jail. Now he sold socks and knew the Park Slope underworld better than anyone. He looked to be in his seventies, fragile and shaky. He lived by the Gowanus Canal and alleged that the folks at Jackie’s were mutated fish who had emerged from its contaminated waters. Their mission was to conquer the world. Jason was playing The Professor, a name given to him for the theft he had committed at a Boston Art Museum. The Professor and his partner Pat “The Weasel” Robles were counterfeit art criminals specializing in selling online fake Picassos, Dalis, and Vermeers.
The game between the professor and Jason was, according to Nishiyama, identical to the game of Capablanca vs. Lasker, a classic Queen’s gambit declined, 1. d4 d5 2. c4 e6 . . . “Never have fear in your heart,” one of the players said. The Professor suddenly made a gesture to his partner Pat that was noticed by the tongueless man. Pat was indeed trying to help his friend, The Professor. The tongueles guy, who was a friend of The Sock Man, took a dagger as a woman entered the bar. She told the tongueless guy, “Tranquilo.” She was a beautiful woman who looked like a model. Her name was Sophie but known by the Gowanus Canal mutant fish as La Muñeca Diabolica. Sophie spoke fluent Spanish, Catalan, and French. She was reputed to be a high-class French prostitute, drug dealer, and poet. She recited a poem written by Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (1651-1695), “Silly, you men—so very adept/at wrongly faulting womankind/ not seeing you’re alone to blame for faults you plant in woman’s mind.” The tongueless man was one of her bodyguards.
Nishiyama took advantage of the situation and told The Sock Man that he was a detective looking for a one-eyed man named Bertrand Folville. After buying all the remaining socks and paying some extra money, he got some information. Folville was a regular at Jackie’s. As the detectives left the bar, Kristin was singing an old song titled “encadenados.” Docteur Edouard looked pensive. Roberto, who was reading a book titled How the French Invented Love by Marilyn Yalom Hanna, was laughing out loud. La Muñeca was dancing, and a woman named Emily K—another mutant fi sh— was reciting her own poem: “Th ere has been enough torture with the sword, at the cusp/a girl’s mirage hanging in a tin bedroom, also world. Th e bedroom is made of tin to stop the lid closing, breathing-in fucking velvet way, no wings. Flies stick, stoning/ Th eir black thin arms rub like prayers/or eating death caressed by soap-bar, cares/All ungrateful weirdos, stick, un-bitch:/In gift s there is unbeaten foam, rich for cleansing mouth.”
Based on the information given by the sock man, the detectives decided to travel to the caves called the Howe Caverns. When they got there they found three people dead, shot at point-blank range. One speleologist murdered was the famous Lithuanian scholar named Giedrius Vytautas, who had written articles proving that women were pioneers as ancient cave painters. Vytautas studies were based on research done in Spain’s caves of Altamira, El Castillo, and Tito Bustillo. Th e other two cave scholars were Wayra Anslot-Deschanel who had conducted extensive research in La Chincana Grande in Cusco, Peru. Th e other man was a South African speleologist named Frikkie Saartjie who was writing a defi nitive work about the infl uence of South Africa’s Sterkfontein Caves on our understanding of early human remains. Th e meaning of hominid evolution was at the center of his studies. Th e enso symbol was also on one of the walls as well as the word chincana.
Nishiyama knew the meaning of the word chincana. It was a cave near the place where he was born. A plane took the detectives to Cusco, Perú.
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