Blue Eyes (17 page)

He walked to Central Park West, to the playground opposite Stephanie's apartment house, where Stephanie passed her mornings with Judith and Alice, away from wealthy neighbors and the auras of her husband's dental clinic. She would sit behind one particular tree, everything above her hips in deep shade, Judith and Alice occupied with sand. Coen wanted the girls. Burdened with Albert and Jessica and losing his wits over Arnold's shoe, he needed to rub against an old wife's family, claim some daughters for himself. Whether Stephanie preferred being untroubled at nine o'clock (she had jars of milk for her and the girls), she didn't begrudge Coen. She recognized his stoop from the opposite end of the playground. The truculent cop walk irritated her but that coarse handsomeness, all the pluck on his face, could make her disremember the bad Coen, his obsequiousness before Isaac, his muteness with her, the confusions in his head. Coen was the one who stalked her, continued his brutal, disconnected courtship. He would break into her apartment, rut her against the bathtub, smolder over Jello with Charles, then disappear for weeks. Still, roosting behind her tree, the milk jars wet in her lap, she was glad he had come. The girls climbed out of the sandbox. “Daddy Fred. Daddy Fred.” He hoisted them over his shoulders with a firm buttocks hold, mouthing the word “shit.” He always arrived emptyhanded, visiting them at the wrong hours, when the nut shops and the five-and-dime were closed. Stephanie had to smile. He carried her girls with such devotion in his grip, she couldn't shut him off. “Freddy, a glass of milk?”

So he had his second breakfast, animal crackers and bloodwarm milk, Arnold's cheese sitting in his craw. Nervous, he could think to ask her only about Charles. She wouldn't entertain him with clinic stories. “He flourishes,” she said. “He comes out of the Bronx a few times a week to look at his daughters and fondle me. Freddy, who's your longhaired friend?”

Coen munched an animal cracker. “What do you mean?”

“The man who's been following me around the last few mornings, blowing bubbles for the girls. He calls me ‘Mrs. Manfred.'”

“Steffie, did you see him today?”

“Yes. A half hour before you.”

“Is he a chinkie sort with a red mop?”

“I think so. Part Chinese.”

Coen put down the girls. “Son-of-a-bitch.” He talked with a knuckle in his mouth. He kicked at his heels. “Fucking César.”

Judith put her fingers on Stephanie's thighs. Alice stuck to Coen. “Freddy, what's wrong?”

“Nothing,” Coen said. “Chicken stuff.” He kneeled in front of Alice. “Don't take bubbles off that Chinaman.” He held Judith's ankle, touched the baby scruff around the bone. “Honey, it takes a runty man to bother your mother and you. I know how to find him.” He hustled from the playground with milk on his lips, yelling from the crook in his shoulder. “Steffie, don't worry about it You're free. The Chinaman won't have his bubble pipe for too long. I'll strip him and his boss.” Stephanie wanted to hail him back, assure him that she wasn't afraid of Chino Reyes; the Chinaman had been gentle with the girls, picking sand from beneath Judith's toes, and polite to her, confessing his admiration for “husband Coen.” But she had been slow in trying to recall him.

Coen was already out of the park. Too anxious to plod downtown in a bus, he rode a gypsy cab straight to Bummy's. Bummy Gilman was known as a good cousin at the stationhouse; he delivered his “flutes” to the captain's man (Coke bottles filled with rye), and he didn't expect to see rat bastards like Coen in his establishment, snoops who annoyed his customers and made everybody unhappy, civilians and regular cops. “Mister, one schnapps on the house, and then you go. And don't sip. Three swallows is all I'm allowing.”

Coen wouldn't answer him. He walked the line of Bummy's stools, poking for the Chinaman. Bummy had the sense not to bother Coen's sleeve.

“I could call the precinct, Coen. Who are they going to protect? Me or you?”

Coen rasped at him finally. “Bummy, get off my back.”

Bummy couldn't negotiate with a crazyman; he let Coen pass, swearing he would register his complaint to the captain's man. He wasn't providing flutes for nothing. Bummy had an investment in Chino Reyes; Chino supplied him with the films that he showed in his kitchen to nephews and cop friends on Saturday nights, and arranged his half-hour appointments with Odette Leonhardy, who could make his tonsils crawl with one of her colder looks. He loved to be swindled by this girl. He got five minutes of skin from Odette, and twenty minutes of sandwiches and frowns. In addition to which, he owned a piece of the films and had an interest in César's Mexican affairs. So he catered to the Chinaman, allowed him to sit at a booth so long as he wore his wig and didn't mingle with too many cops.

The Chinaman spotted Coen at the door. He wasn't apprehensive. He finished his second Irish whiskey of the morning and watched Bummy mix with Coen. He couldn't figure why Bummy had such a swollen face. He had gotten fond of Coen in Mexico (because of his loyalties to Jerónimo, his quiet, Polish ways), and the fondness stuck. The Chinaman was brooding over his failures with Odette; he couldn't find the porno queen. He led Coen over to his booth. “Chico, what's happening?”

Coen leaned into the Chinaman, pushed his nose against the wall so that the Chinaman couldn't breathe.

“I'll kill you, you mother, if you ever go near my wife and her babies again.”

Coen brought his hand away. The Chinaman gagged but he didn't get up or make a move for Coen.

“Polish, that's the second time you touched my face.”

With the booth between them, they had a huffing war, blowing air around in great sulks. The Chinaman's coloring came back once he conceived a plan. He would smile now, then lay for Coen, catch him by the neck. He couldn't afford to wrestle in a public place. He would lose his standing with Bummy and bring the cops here. So he clawed the inside of the booth, crossed his feet, and talked to Coen.

“Polish, it was a social call. I didn't scare the wife. She has lovely kids.” He saw Coen's hand curl, and he protected his nose, bending deeper into the booth. “Didn't I reward the Spic? He'd be limping with sores on his feet, if not for me. I mobilized him, Polish, don't forget”

“Chino, keep Arnold out of it He doesn't need your gifts. And if César wants to signal me, let him do it himself.”

The Chinaman had signals of his own for César. Maybe Zorro was hiding the queen. Or telling her to avoid her usual lanes. He hadn't been able to catch Odile at Jane Street or The Dwarf.

Calmer after having had some flesh in his hand, after squeezing the Chinaman, Coen could sit on a bus. He stopped at the dairy restaurant on Seventy-third and waited for Boris the steerer, the man in the three-button vest. Coen kept aloof from the gamblers who licked almond paste on their pignolia horns and flicked their boutonnieres in the window. He couldn't tell if the steerer made any morning calls. He wouldn't buy a flower. The steerer passed him in a feathered hat. “Boris?” Coen hissed.

The steerer frowned at him and walked a little faster. Coen seized him up by the coattails. The steerer swayed on his legs.

“Boris, tell César, and tell him good. No more pranks on any of my people. This is Manfred Coen talking to you. I can take your whole operation off the street. I can sit you down in the detective room. I can send all the old cockers with flowers in their coats into the judge. So Zorro better get to me in a hurry.”

The steerer was mortified to find someone taking liberties with his clothes in front of the restaurant. He smoothed his coattails the first chance he had. And he tilted his head to the boutonnieres in the window to prove that he was in command. “Mr. Coen, only Zorro knows where Zorro is,” he said, biting his cheek cryptically and rushing indoors. But he dropped his hat on the sidewalk, and Coen had to straighten the feather for him. “That swine isn't pure enough for my boss,” he whispered to the boutonnieres. “He once had an unkosher wife.”

In five minutes Coen was sitting on his bed, his ankles itching from the number of confrontations he'd had. He smiled when the phone rang. César called him prickless and gutless. “Manfred, you don't have to pull on Boris to find me. Why shame a man in his own territory? He won't enjoy his blintzes any more.”

“Zorro, you shouldn't have made the Chinaman bring back Spanish's fat shoe.”

“Crazy, do I interfere with the chink's personal business? He has a mind. And since when am I Zorro to you?”

“You're the one who wants me for an enemy. Why are you dogging my wife? César, I promise you, that Chinaman shows up at her playground one more time, I'll kick you far as Boston Road. What's the matter? You can't stand me fraternizing with Odile? Don't worry. I didn't taste her sandwiches.”

“Look who discovered America,” César mumbled into the phone. “She's wide.”

“What?”

“I said she's wide. The virgin queen. She puts it in your face, and runs to Vander Child. I couldn't care a nigger's lip how much you're getting from Odette. Schmuck, she works for me.”

“Then what's bugging you, César?”

“You know, you miserable shit. Papa gave you the farm. He let you sit on his own toilet seat. You took his food. You burned his candles on the holidays. He trusted you with Jerónimo. He put you next to him, on his left side. He forgave you for being a Coen. I could see you turn. Manfred with his sketching pad. The boy from the Manhattan high school. With his fancy report cards. I told Papa to throw chocolate syrup in your eyes. But Papa liked you, so he blinked the other way.”

“That's twenty years ago. What's it got to do with planting the Chinaman near my wife?”

“Ask your sweetheart, your old Chief.”

“Isaac? He's your Papa's man.”

“Baloney. Boston Road's one big wire, with plugs going from our mouths to the Chiefs ass. Isaac doesn't miss a word.”

“So why did Papa take him in?”

“Because if a rat comes sniffing around it's better to keep him where you can find him, so he won't feed off your guts in the dark.”

“César, the last time I was in the Bronx Isaac put the wall between me and him. He closed the toilet door in my face.”

“We showed you Jerónimo, we showed you Mordeckay, we got Vander's kid for you, and you turned around and went to the Chief.”

“I've been nursing a ping-pong bat since I'm home. Nothing more.”

“That's not how Isaac tells it. He taunts Papa with your name. You're his ‘principal bait' You dangled yourself on Isaac's line. Manfred, you got to be a cuntface and a snot from your mother. She took sunbaths in Papa's orchard, she made sure Jerónimo could see her from her nipples down, and then she complained that the baby was spying on her.”

Coen remembered the orchard table, Papa's humpbacked trees, Jerónimo playing with a bow too weak to hold an arrow, Albert and Sheb off the farm looking for country eggs, jumbos to take with them to the Bronx, Coen with his mother on the table, begging her to wear a blanket, walking around the table like some scarecrow with stretched arms whenever Jerónimo blundered near them trying to retrieve the arrows that spilled off his bow.

“César, my mother's not here. Ask Papa how much my father owed him before he died? Tell me why it took so long to locate my address in Germany? Did you all add my father's bills up to the penny? How much was the egg store behind?”

“Manfred, wake up. Papa could have carried the egg store on his finger. Why should he need your father's little grubs?” And he hung up on Coen, who couldn't get the whiff of strawberries out of his nose or forestall the image of his mother stooping in the fields, putting strawberries in the bandanna that ought to have been on her chest. Did she ever strip like this with Albert around? Was she defying the Guzmanns or showing off? Who else peeked under the bandanna? Is that why Albert wouldn't send them to the farm any more? Coen stuck a pillow on his head and chewed near the wall.

Boris Telfin,
the
Boris Telfin of cherry blintzes and quarter cigars, was a dice steerer, a man who sat for gamblers, not a message boy. It was bad enough that he was owned by Marranos, a family of pig-eating Jews, the Guzmanns of Portugal, Lima, and the Bronx, who mumbled paternosters into their chicken soup, who put crosses on their graves, who were Christians 80 percent of the time; but he didn't expect to be a permanent liaison between Zorro (the most variable of his masters) and a Chinaman. Still, it wasn't entirely César's fault. The First Deputy men were keeping him indoors, patrolling his dice cribs (the apartments where the games were held) in green cars, and César couldn't risk a ride into the Chinaman's territories. So Boris had to go.

He met the Chinaman in a lot on Prince Street. The fool wore suspenders that could have marked him a mile off. Boris couldn't get familiar with such a person (at least the Marranos had a distaste for violence and open warfare). He knew about the Chinaman's career, the skullings of cab drivers and other chauffeurs. No hackie could be safe around this chink.

“Sweetheart, tell Zorro I dumped the shoe. It was my choice. It's a whore's boot. It was bringing me hard luck.”

“Mister, that's old news. I mean about the shoe. Zorro asks you a favor. Concerning the gentleman Coen. Enough is enough. Personally I wouldn't mind a little brain damage. His head could use a few more holes. But that aint César's wish. He wants you to lay low. Madam Coen is free to think her Christian thoughts unmolested in the park.”

“Boris, he touched my face. Twice. Once at the stationhouse, once at Bummy's. He gets blown away for that, but I'll pick the hour.”

“Mister, he touched me too. He pulled my coat Imagine, he molests you on the street, the tin cop. All my brother-in-laws were watching.”