Blue Eyes (2 page)

The Chinaman went to Ferrara's pastry house and ordered three napoleons and one cannoli, and a tall glass of orzata, an almond drink favored by Italians, Cubans, and half-Chinese. A crapshooter from uptown caught him in the middle of a napoleon. The crapshooter was sixty-seven, with bleached hair and uninterrupted moons on his fingernails. His cheeks were wide with agitation. He couldn't keep his hands off the Chinaman's suspenders. “Chino, I want the girl.” The Chinaman started another napoleon. “You hear, it has to be Odette.”

“Ziggy, you'd better settle for something less. That girl is off the market.”

Unable to operate in Chinatown, Chino was managing a small train of whores for an uptown syndicate.

“Zorro says she's still in business. I'll tell him about you, Chino, I mean it.”

“Tell,” the Chinaman said.

“Chino, I'm offering you a hundred and fifty. That's clear profit. She doesn't have to take off a garment. I just want to look.”

“Ziggy, walk away while you still own a pair of legs. I can't digest the cannoli with your perfume in my nose.”

Not all of the Chinaman's problems stemmed from Coen. He was in love with an eighteen-year-old prostitute, one of his own girls. The Chinaman distributed short subjects featuring Odette, the porno queen, to specific bars and stag clubs, he arranged dates for her with serious men who arrived at Odette's apartment on Jane Street with fifty-dollar bills tucked in their shoes, but he couldn't get a finger inside Odette's clothes. She wouldn't fornicate with a Chinaman. Kicking under his pride, he offered to pay. Two hundred dollars. For a girl he was managing. Two hundred dollars for someone who should have admired the soft leather on his suspenders, who should have been grateful for making her rich. Odette said no. “Sonny, I don't get down with trigger-men.” The Chinaman would have branded her, shaved her crotch, put his initials on her belly, no matter how valuable a property she was, but Odette could control his rages with a few chosen words. “Zorro wouldn't like me with blood on my behind.”

So Chino walked the line between Bummy's and Ferrara's, his mop growing a dirty brownish red (he couldn't risk eating at any of the dim sum cafes on Mott Street though he was starving for pork and abalone), until the spit accumulated on his underlip and he tired of almond syrup on his tongue. Then he went looking for Odette. He tried Jane Street, stabbing her buzzer with a doublejointed finger.

“Odette, you home? It's only me, Reyes. I want we should talk. I make you a promise. I won't touch.”

Odette's landlady, a woman in hair curlers and pink mules, came to the front door. She wouldn't open it for the Chinaman, and he had to shout through the glass. “Take me to Miss Odette.” Her frowns convinced him; he would have to go in around the back. “Hey muchacha,” he said, tapping on the glass, “don't wait too long for me.” He blustered toward the side of the house, trampling little vegetable gardens, crushing the remains of certain flower pots. The Jane Street alley cats wouldn't move for the Chinaman. He had to unhitch one of his suspenders and whirl it at them before they would give up their perch on the fire escape. Then he grabbed for the bottom rung of the ladder, chinned himself up, and settled outside Odette's windowsill. The window revealed nothing to him. He saw green furniture through a maze of curtain fluff. He forced open the window without splitting any glass. Climbing in, he searched Odette's room and a half, nibbling the miniature sandwiches she kept in the icebox for the clients Chino brought her (crescents, triangles, and squares of black bread with snips of cheese), reminding him of his new livelihood as a pimp. He took stockings out of her hamper, garter belts, soiled brassieres that she wore in her films. He wanted keepsakes, a wealth of underclothes. “Jesus,” he said, stuffing his pockets. “She's with her girlfriends.” And he went out the front, scorning fire escapes this time, a garter belt dangling at his knees.

He could have charged into Odette's hangout, The Dwarf, but both the lady bouncers were taller than Chino, and he would have lost a sleeve and a shoe before he reached Odette. So he called from a booth across the street. “Odette Leonhardy,” he said with a fake lisp.

“Who is this?”

The bouncer had a softer voice than he expected.

“It's Zorro.”

“She hasn't come in yet, Mr. Zorro. Can I take a message?”

“Yeah,” the Chinaman said. “Tell her somebody raided her hamper. And if she wants her party clothes back, she'd better be nice to a particular gentleman. She'll know who.”

“Anything else, Mr. Zorro? Then I'll have to say goodbye.”

The Chinaman stood in the phonebooth biting a knuckle and watching the blood rise, his red hair sticky with sugar from all the napoleons he'd consumed. He couldn't decide whether to go uptown or downtown, to meet up with Zorro, Odette, or Coen. He hogged the booth, scattering men and women who wanted to make a call. Finally he trailed a stocking from the top of the booth and walked away from The Dwarf.

2
DeFalco, Rosenheim, and Brown despised Coen because he wouldn't live out on the Island with them. He had no family. Only an uncle in a nursing home on Riverside Drive. Coen's wife left him for a Manhattan dentist. She had a pair of new children, not Coen's. He ate at Cuban restaurants. He was a ping-pong freak. He wouldn't allow any of the auxiliary policewomen near his flies. He bought chocolates for Isobel, the
portorriqueña
, and made their own offerings of cupcakes and lemon balls seem contemptible to them. He was the boyhood friend of César Guzmann, the gambler and whorehouse entrepreneur, and they knew that the Guzmanns owed him a favor. After the flop-out at Bummy's, the three bulls drove home to Islip, Freeport, and Massapequa Park, and Coen gobbled black beans and drank Cuban coffee on Columbus Avenue with Arnold the Spic.

The waiters, who couldn't warm to most
norteamericanos
, enjoyed Coen and his ten words of Spanish. They sat him in a privileged spot along the counter. They filled his cup with hot milk. They fed him extra portions of beans. Although they were proud of Arnold's handcuffs, they didn't dwell on the gun at Coen's hip. They accepted him as Arnold's
patrón
without the politeness and fraudulent grins they used on cops and sanitation chiefs. They protected his long periods of silence, and discouraged negligible people from going near him. He sat over his cup for an hour. Arnold read his comic books. Then Coen said, “Leave the Chinaman to me.” Deep in his comic, Arnold couldn't hear.

Coen lived in a five-story walkup on Seventieth and Columbus, over a Spanish grocery. He had broken panes in two of his windows. Apples grew warts in Coen's refrigerator. The First Deputy's office woke him at three in the morning. They expected him downtown by four. In the past Coen would have changed his underwear and picked at his teeth with dental floss. But he was tired of their kidnappings. Brodsky, a chauffeur from the office, drove him down. Brodsky was a first-grade detective, like Coen. He earned his gold shield driving inspectors' wives around and grooming undercover agents. Years ago he could buy his friends into a detective squad for a few hundred dollars. He had to discontinue the practice with younger chiefs in power. He rode through Central Park frowning at Coen. “They'll burn you this time.” Coen yawned. He was wearing a pale tie over his pajama tops.

“Who wants me?”

“Pimloe. He's a Harvard boy. He won't eat your shit.”

“Another mutt,” Coen said.

He couldn't get clear of the First Dep's office. They stuck to him since his rookie days. Isaac Sidel, a new deputy inspector in the office, pulled him out of the academy because he needed a kid, a blue-eyed kid, to infiltrate a ring of Polish loft burglars who were fleecing the garment area with the approval of certain detectives from the safe and loft squad. Coen wore cheap corduroy for Isaac, and grew a ducktail in the style of a young Polish hood. He hauled coat racks on Thirty-ninth Street for a dummy firm and ate in a workingman's dive until an obscure member of the ring recruited him over a dish of blood salami. Coen took no part in burglaries. He hauled racks for the ring. One day two men in business suits stole Coen's racks and banged him in the shins. Isaac told him these men were county detectives from the District Attorney's office, who were conducting their own investigation of the burglaries and were trying to shake off Coen. “Manfred, how did they make you so fast?”

In a month's time the ring was broken up and the rogue cops from safe and loft were exposed, without much help from Coen. He was returned to the academy. He took target practice with the other probies. In bed before midnight, he followed all the Cinderella rules. After graduation the First Dep picked him up. Coen had a rabbi now. Isaac assigned him to the First Dep's special detective squad. Half a year later Coen had a gold badge. He rose with Isaac the Chief, making first grade at the age of twenty-nine. On occasion the First Dep loaned him out to the Bureau of Special Services, so Coen could escort a starlet who had been threatened by some Manhattan freak. BOSS wanted a softspoken cop, handsome and tough, preferably with blue eyes. He was the department's wonderboy until his rabbi fell from grace. A numbers banker indebted to the District Attorney's office for pampering him after he strangled his wife showed his gratitude by mentioning a Jew inspector on the payroll of a gambling combine in the Bronx. The District Attorney sang to the First Dep. Isaac sent his papers in and disappeared without a pension. The First Dep waited a month before dropping Coen.

Brodsky delivered him to one of the First Dep's rat-holes on Lexington and Twenty-ninth. Herbert Pimloe conducted his investigations here; he had replaced Isaac as the First Dep's “whip.” Coen sat with Brodsky on a bench outside Pimloe's office. The building was devoted to the manufacture of sport shirts, and Coen compared the design of his pajama tops with the shirt samples on the wall. Brodsky left at five. Coen thought of his wife's two girls. He smiled at the tactics the First Dep men liked to use, sweating you on a wooden bench, forcing you to wonder how much they knew about the fragments of your life until you were willing to doubt the existence of your own dead father and mother. The company watchman arrived on the floor and stared at Coen. “Hello,” Coen said. He was getting sleepy. The watchman seemed indignant about having pajamas in his building. Coen straightened his tie and dozed on the bench. A hand gripped his collarbone. He recognized Pimloe by the attaché case and the Italian shoes. Pimloe was disgruntled. He expected his hirelings to stay awake. Coen stumbled into the office. Pimloe closed the door.

“You're enjoying the Apple, aren't you?”

“I can live without it, Herbert.”

“Bullshit. You'd fall apart outside the borough. The cunt are scarier in Queens. No one would notice your pretty fingers. You couldn't nod to Cary Grant on the street. I know you, Coen. Take away the Apple, and you'd never make it.”

“I'm from the Bronx, Herbert. My father sold eggs on Boston Road.”

“The Bronx,” Pimloe said. “The jigs own spear factories in the Bronx. Hunts Point is perfect training ground for the tactical units. They could parachute over Simpson Street and kill the Viet Cong. Manfred, you'd freeze your ass in the Bronx. You'd have a shriveled prick.”

Coen threaded a hand through the opposite sleeve of his pajamas. “Herbert, what do you want?”

“Change your pajamas, Coen. They stink.” Pimloe touched his paperweight, a brass sea lion with painted whiskers. “I need a girl.”

Coen forced down a smile.

“Not for me, stupid. This girl's a runaway. She's been missing over a month. Her father thinks some West Side pimp caught hold of her.”

“Herbert, maybe it was the lipstick freak. Did you try the morgue?”

“Shut up, Coen. Her father's the Broadway angel, Vander Child.”

“Herbert, why me? What about Missing Persons or one of your aces over at the burglary squad?”

“Vander doesn't like cops. He'll take to you. I told him you're the man who guards Marlon Brando in New York.”

“I never met Brando.”

“But you know all the pimps. That's what counts. Vander has a team of private detectives out. They can't find shit. The daughter's name is Caroline.”

Coen dug a finger under the pajamas and scratched. Pimloe leered at him.

“She's too old for you, Coen. Sixteen and a half.” He scribbled a Fifth Avenue address on a piece of departmental paper. “Vander's expecting you. If you're a good boy, Coen, he'll let you see the view from his windows. Maybe he'll feed you some kosher salami.”

Coen turned around. Pimloe kept talking.

“Coen, you're the weirdest Jew I ever saw. Somebody must have put you in the wrong crib. How's Isaac?”

“Ask him yourself.”

“All the Jews sleep in one bed. You, Isaac, and Papa Guzmann.”

“Your spies are napping, Herbert. The Guzmanns turned Catholic hundreds of years ago.”

“Then why do they keep Jew scrolls on their doors?”

“Because they're superstitious people. Now what does Isaac have to do with Papa?”

“You're slow, Coen. Isaac is Papa's new bodyguard. Imagine, the biggest brain we had, whoring for a bunch of pickpockets.” Pimloe saved one wink for Coen. “You won't be catching homicides for a while. I'm taking you off the chart. Don't bother with the squadroom. You report to me.”

Walking down the stairs Coen put knots in his tie. Brodsky found him dozing on the sidewalk. Coen wouldn't open his mouth until they reached Columbus Circle.

“Why should Pimloe be so curious about the Guzmanns? They can't hurt him much from the Bronx. Papa hates the air in Manhattan.”

“It isn't Papa he's after. César's split from the tribe. He's been changing boroughs. But he don't dig the East Side. He cruises on West Eighty-ninth.”