Numbers Don't Lie Read Free

lawyer). “Your long travail is over,” I said. “I found an 1800. A P1800. With an interior.”
    â€œHandles?”
    â€œHandles.”
    â€œPanels?”
    â€œPanels.”
    â€œKnobs?” Wu had stopped stirring. I had his attention.
    Â 
    * * *
    Â 
    â€œI hear you got your brakes fixed,” Wu said the next day as we were on our way to Howard Beach in my car. “Or perhaps I should say, ‘I don’t hear.’ ”
    â€œI found the parts yesterday and put them on this morning,” I told him. I told him the story of how I found the Hole. I told him about the junkyard of Volvos. I told him about stumbling across the dark blue P1800. By then, we were past the end of Atlantic Avenue, near Howard Beach. I turned off onto Conduit and tried to retrace my turns of the day before, but with no luck. Nothing looked familiar.
    Wu started to look skeptical; or maybe I should say, he started to look even more skeptical. “Maybe it was all a dream,” he said, either taunting me or comforting himself, or both.
    â€œI don’t see P1800s in junkyards, even in dreams,” I said. But in spite of my best efforts to find the Hole, I was going in circles. Finally, I gave up and went to Boulevard Imports . The place was almost empty. I didn’t recognize the counterman. His shirt said he was a Sal.
    â€œVinnie’s off,” he said. “It’s Saturday.”
    â€œThen maybe you can help me. I’m trying to find a place called Frankie’s. In the Hole.”
    People sometimes use the expression “blank look” loosely. Sal’s was the genuine article.
    â€œA Volvo junkyard?” I said. “A pony or so?”
    Blank got even blanker. Wu had come in behind me, and I didn’t have to turn around to know he was looking skeptical.
    â€œI don’t know about any Volvos, but did somebody mention a pony?” a voice said from in the back. An old man came forward. He must have been doing the books, since he was wearing a tie. “My Pop used to keep a pony in the Hole. We sold it when horseshoes got scarce during the War.”
    â€œJeez, Vinnie, what war was this?” Sal asked. (So I had found another Vinnie!)
    â€œHow many have there been?” the old Vinnie asked. He turned to me. “Now, listen up, kid.” (I couldn’t help smiling; usually only judges call me ‘kid,’ and only in chambers.) “I can only tell you once, and I’m not sure I’ll get it right.”
    The old Vinnie’s instructions were completely different from the ones I had gotten from the Vinnie the day before. They involved a turn into an abandoned gas station on the Belt Parkway, a used car lot on Conduit, a McDonald’s with a dumpster in the back, plus other flourishes that I have forgotten.
    Suffice it to say that, twenty minutes later, after bouncing down a steep bank, Wu and I found ourselves cruising the wide mud streets of the Hole, looking for Frankie’s. I could tell by Wu’s silence that he was impressed. The Hole is pretty impressive if you are not expecting it, and who’s expecting it? There was the non-vertical crane, the subway car (with smoke coming from its makeshift chimney), and the horse grazing in a lot between two shanties. I wondered if it was a descendant of the old Vinnie’s father’s pony. I couldn’t tell if it was shod or not.
    The fat lady was still on the phone. The kids must have heard us coming, because they were standing in front of the card table waving hand-lettered signs: MOON ROCKS THIS WAY! and MOON ROCKS R US! When he saw them, Wu put his hand on my arm and said, “Pull over, Irv,”—his first words since we had descended into the Hole.
    I pulled over and he got out. He fingered a couple of ashy-looking lumps, and handed the kids a dollar. They giggled and said they had no change.
    Wu told them to keep it.
    â€œI hope you don’t behave