Blue Eyes (25 page)

Papa took him in but there were no preliminary hugs. If Isaac had known the habitat of the Guzmanns, he might have understood the queerness of this and crept with his tail in his hand back to the First Deputy. The Guzmanns never hired a runner without hugging him first. Papa was following the customs of his fathers in Peru. For the Marranos evil had a discernible stench from up close. Their hug was only a subterfuge, the chance to sniff how much harm they could expect. Not to smell a man was to show him the greatest contempt. Isaac sucked the liquid out of Papa's cherry candies and ate with Jerónimo's spoon. He carried quarters from Jorge's overflow, he formed a chain with Topal and Alejandro to load five-gallon syrup jugs into the cellar, he was given all the nigger accounts to play with. Papa had no salary for him. He lived on the pennies he collected, without seeing a dollar bill unless he brought his loot to the bank. No matter how far he toured Boston Road, he couldn't find any smudges of César or the marriage bureau.

So he washed pennies in his tub, learned the aromas of white chocolate from Jerónimo, shaved every third day, slouched like a Guzmann, grunted like a Guzmann, picked his nose, and arrived at the First Deputy's office with sticky sideburns, a scratched face, and penny dust on his fingers. His former deputies could only goggle. They knew Isaac was floating in the Bronx, but they hadn't expected such deterioration. Isaac, they remembered, was an immaculate man. Pimloe sneered together with the other DIs. They wouldn't associate with an unfrocked inspector. And Isaac, who had been using monosyllables on Boston Road, penny talk, gesturing to Jerónimo, mooing at Jorge, saw he couldn't explain himself to these men. The First Deputy rescued him, clarifying Isaac's mission to the DIs and detectives from the rat squad. The DIs shook Isaac's fist (they realized he would be the next First Dep). The detectives goggled anew, their faith restored in the master's technique; no one but Isaac could have watched Papa Guzmann through the stem of an ice cream dish.

Of all the Guzmanns Isaac preferred Jerónimo. They would break the hump of an afternoon leaning against Papa's comic book racks, playing tic-tac-toe on a magic board (the baby generally won), finishing a gallon of chocolate soda between them. But Isaac wouldn't allow fondnesses to muddy up the logistics in his head. Jerónimo was the Guzmanns' weakest point. The baby couldn't have wiped himself without the toilet paper Papa stuffed in his underpants to remind him where to look. He had to pause at most corners, rethinking the concepts of green and red. Still, Isaac might have gone after Jorge, who lacked Jerónimo's social graces and could get dizzy walking a straight line, if Jorge hadn't been so articulate with a fingernail and a knife (Isaac had seen Papa's middle boy carve a runner for chiseling the family out of fifty cents). So he had detectives in unmarked cars ride behind Jerónimo in the street, bump him at five miles an hour. It didn't take Papa more than a week to catch the drift of Isaac's cars. He sweetened Isaac's sodas, gave him phantom accounts to chase. Only then would he say, “Isaac, I don't want bruises on my boy. If Alejandro finds a fender in his ass, that's one thing. He knows how to spit through a window. Isaac, listen to me, that man who harms Jerónimo, black or white, will go out of this world with a missing pair of balls. Don't be misled by the malted machines. I was raised in Peru.”

And Isaac, who had taken overeager triggermen out of circulation, who had destroyed all the straw dummies in the policemen's gym perfecting his rabbit punch, could only wag his head. “Papa, I never touched the boy. Those are somebody else's men. I can't direct traffic from a candy store.”

Papa didn't have to rely on Isaac's generosity. He took Jerónimo off the street The boy had to confine his hikes to the spaces between Papa's stools. He grew miserable dodging the leatherbound seats with chocolate in his mouth. Isaac was waiting for the Guzmann machine to collapse under the strain of Jerónimo's sad eyes when the baby disappeared into Manhattan. Restless, with Papa on his back, Isaac learned to hate that other baby, Manfred Coen, who had been reared with Jerónimo, Jorge, and César. Coen suffered from syrup on the brain (like Jerónimo), chewed from the same lamb's bone during the Marrano Easter, and Isaac resented this. He had pulled him out of the academy because he needed a boy with a pliable face, a blue-eyed wonder who wouldn't look outlandish in a brassiere, who could chase a felon in women's shoes, wear a false nose, become a swish for half a night. And Isaac got his plastic man. Fatherless at twenty-three, a rifleman out of Worms brought into passivity by a Bronx oven, Coen was ready to have his chin thickened with putty. Isaac had found the ultimate orphan, a boy with a squash-able self. Steered by Isaac, Coen made detective first grade impersonating bimbos, Polacks, fingermen, and lousy cops. Coen picked up a wife somewhere, a girl who took him to concerts, deprived him of his orphanhood little by little, and threatened his usefulness to the police. So Isaac began lending Coen to the Bureau of Special Services, and the wonder-boy escorted other men's wives, slept on Park Avenue, drifted out of marriage, and jumped into Isaac's lap.

Isaac hadn't taken advantage of Coen's prettiness, turned him into a herringbone cop, simply out of love for his own department. He figured Coen would be better off without a wife. When the deputy inspectors under him got on his nerves, he would climb Coen's fire escape, sit with the cop over checkers and strong tea. Coen encouraged Isaac to come through the window. He was a boy without ambitions. The double and triple jumps he gave up to Isaac weren't meant to flatter the Chief. Coen had no head for strategies on a board. And Isaac could appreciate an hour away from whining inspectors. He trusted the boy enough to take off his shoes and nap in Coen's presence. Brodsky would honk at him from the street if any emergency arose. And Coen would rouse him with a finger. “Isaac, get up. They can't survive without you.” Nudged out of sleep, Isaac had the comfort of a smile, blue eyes over him, a boy with a gun near his heart, one of Isaac's deadly angels (most of Isaac's deputies were marksmen with good manners and sweet faces).

The longer Isaac scrounged in the Bronx, the more bitter he grew about Coen. The boy was as much Guzmann as cop. Isaac had bottled Coen, restricted him to homicide squads in the southern boroughs, because he didn't want to compromise his angel, force him to choose between Papa and the First Dep. Then Isaac reversed himself. Humiliated by Papa, licking syrup in a dark store, he threw Coen at the Guzmanns, pushed him into the middle of César's marriage bureau, pointing him toward Mexico, Fifth Avenue, and Vander Child. The boy irritated the Guzmanns, but he couldn't harm them. Instead of luring César out of the closet, he got a bullet in the throat. And Isaac sat in his office, repatriated, his minor sins absolved by the Hands of Esau, the letters of his name moving across the door (it took the stenciler a whole hour to scratch out Pimloe and complete I-S-A-A-C), his handgrips in their old place on his desk, his locks and fountain pens restored by the property clerk, his deputies milling in their cubicles, waiting for the word, his office toothbrush on the sink, his stockings gartered, his suspenders tight, but without César, without Papa, without Coen.

Part 4

16
Schiller lived amid the rubble. He wouldn't clean. His voice came back after sucking lozenges for a week but he had little to say. The freaks might have remained loyal to the club. The first three tables were unharmed, and Schiller was too distracted to collect more than a few pennies from them. But the lights buzzed in their eyes, the walls began to sweat, and they were worried about getting glass in their sneakers. So they went to Morris' on Seventy-third, where the ceilings were low and the wire cage around every bulb left shadows on the ball, or else they played at Reisman's on Ninety-sixth, which was roomier and better lit but cost them a quarter more per hour. If they did think of Coen, it was only to remind themselves that such an odd cop deserved a ping-pong grave. And they would advertise to their relatives how they had seen the Chinaman's bullet land under Coen's neck, carry him eight feet, rupture an artery, and squeeze blood through his ears, although not one of them had been inside the club when the Chinaman shot Coen.

Arnold lost his ambition to move out of the singles hotel. He added marmalade to the jars on his window and put a coat of yellow shellac on his orthopedic shoe that was guaranteed not to eat leather or melt the foam in his arch. He couldn't blame the Chinaman. In his mind Isaac and the Guzmanns murdered Coen. He received an invitation from Rosenheim, DeFalco, and Brown (countersigned by a borough chief) to reenter Coen's district and preside over the cage in the squadroom, but Arnold declined. He had no tolerance for detectives without Coen. Schiller gave him Coen's bat and headband (the shield, holster, and gun went to the First Deputy's office). Arnold wore the headband in his room. He took the Mark V with him on his walks around the block, the handle under his strap, rubber against his ribs. The bat gave him a certain prestige among the SROs, who couldn't worship Coen until after he was dead, and the Cuban waiters, who had been fond of the
agente
with the
blanco
complexion. He would descend the steps of the club, his big shoe pointing into the rails, clear the vestibule in twenty swipes, find Schiller, and say, “Jesus, open your lungs. Hombre, go upstairs.” Schiller wouldn't move. Maybe Arnold had a candy bar for him, or yesterday's newspaper. They sat together on Schiller's bench, not knowing what to do with their thumbs. Arnold couldn't breathe glass and live near wall dust without having to sneeze. He would touch Schiller goodbye, most likely on the knee, make it to the vestibule, and start the climb with both hands on the rail and the shoe pointing north.

Even with César scarce and the Chinaman dead, Odile didn't have to sacrifice any of her routines. She traveled in a triangular sweep from The Dwarf to uncle Vander to Jane Street to The Dwarf again at least twice a day. She danced hip to hip with her girlfriends at The Dwarf but wouldn't kiss them on the mouth. She balanced dessert spoons on her labia to satisfy Vander's cameramen, had climaxes off the edges of the spoons. She didn't need the Chinaman to solicit for her. Bummy Gilman came to Odile of his own accord. She washed him in a milky solution (89 cents at the drugstore) with all her skirts on and collected a hundred dollars. It was here, shampooing Bummy's genitals, rinsing down his thighs, that she appreciated Coen. The cop hadn't itemized her, hadn't inspected her longish nipples and the moles on her back, hadn't asked her for tricks with her labia or white shampoos. Odile believed in fatalities: Coen had to the this year, but she wished he would have avoided the Chinaman one more month. She might have lured him to Jane Street then, studied the scowl bumps over his eyes, made a hollow for herself under his arm, slept there an hour, and still have gotten up in time to dance with Dorotea at The Dwarf.

Odile would be nineteen in June. She had starred in eleven features and thirteen featurettes, she had worn vaginal jelly for a hundred and five men, not counting Vander, whom she seduced while she was twelve; Bummy, who hadn't been inside her clothes; the Chinaman, who had gone no further than to dribble sperm on her left thigh; Jerónimo, who had her with his eyes shut; César, who owned her more or less and didn't need invitations to Jane Street; the four remaining Guzmanns (Topal, Alejandro, Papa, and Jorge), or Coen. (Odile, who had seen Jewish men in their nakedness, men like Bummy and the cop, still couldn't understand why all six Guzmanns had to be burdened with pieces of skin on their pricks. She got no explanations from César. She had to figure that the Guzmanns made poor Jews.) She began lighting the green memorial candles César gave her after her dog Velasquez choked on a wishbone. But she forgot the prayers that went with the candles, and she wouldn't saw them in half with a butterknife the way the Guzmanns did. So she ran out of her short supply and stopped bothering with Coen.

Convinced that he was under a benign form of house arrest, Vander hoarded his croissants. The First Deputy's office had advised him to sit in Manhattan. He was supposed to maintain contact with the Guzmanns, but Zorro wouldn't nibble. He had no misconceptions about his value to the chiefs. When his usefulness plunged deep enough, he would be fed to the grand jury like a vile animal. Isaac had fingered him at the airport in January coming home from Mexico with vouchers from Mordeckay on the brides (most of them were in a Marrano code and couldn't be deciphered). It took Isaac under an hour to turn the Broadway angel around, and Vander left the airport a spy registered to Deputy Inspector Herbert Pimloe (Isaac wouldn't accept informants in his own name). Hurrying to dismantle his cameras and liquidate his production company, Vander discovered that being a spy gave him immunity from the local police. He could operate as a pornographer without fear of a raid. He was untouchable for the moment, on the First Deputy's rolls. And if he couldn't make Spain this year to collect pesetas from his investments in Castilian construction firms and visit his favorite Goyas in Madrid, he could walk Odile through a film a month. He remembered nothing more of Coen than their ping-pong. He assumed that the Chinaman's death prefigured the collapse of the Guzmanns. But there was no evidence of this.

César didn't neglect Isaac's restoration. He juggled his addresses, hopping from Eighty-ninth Street to Ninety second to a room over the dairy restaurant on Seventy-third, where he used the name Morris Shine. He had a fuzzy attitude about Coen's death. He missed the Chinaman more. One of his Bronx cousins claimed the body from the morgue. He buried Chino in the Guzmann plot, outside city limits, with a Marrano crier in attendance, Papa, Topal, and Jerónimo wearing the gray Marrano death shawls, Jorge guarding the entrance to the cemetery, a spike in either hand.

The smell of barley soup and mushroom pancakes came up through the woodwork to badger César. Coen was the dairy boy. César was a porkeater, and the memory of his meals with the Chinaman, stringbeans and minced pork, pork rolls, five-flavored pork, pork and Chinese cabbage, made him spit into the toilet with anger and spite. César rang downstairs (he had a special line hooked into the cashier's stall at the dairy restaurant). “Get me Boris Telfin. I want his bus outside in eight minutes. Lady, this dump stinks.”