Blue Eyes (7 page)

“Chinaman, you ever rip me off again, you come through my window once more, you toy with my garter belts and my movie clothes, you touch my sandwiches, and you'll need a special shoe for your other foot.”

The Chinaman lost his sway; he had hoped to charm Odile, show her the intricate turns he could accomplish with Arnold's boot for a rudder.

“Odette, I thought you'd like it. I stole it on account of you. It belongs to a Puerto Rican stoolpigeon.”

Odile was affected by the Chinaman's droop, by the desperation in his posture, but she wouldn't go outside. And when the Chinaman hobbled toward her, she hid behind Janice and Sweeney. “Don't you come close,” she said.

The Chinaman saw Janice take the brass knucks out of the pocket of her doublebreasted coat. Sweeney was smiling too hard. She cooed at the Chinaman. “Just step over the doorpiece, Mr. Reyes. The threshold isn't high. Come on, Chinee. Cousin has some hors d'oeuvres for you.”

The Chinaman would only address Odile. “There's business between us, Odette. Customers. Mr. Bummy Gilman. A few other Johns.”

“Then call my answering service,” Odile said, peering around Sweeney's shoulderpadding. “Leave names and dates with the operator. And make sure you quote the price. I'm not getting down with those goofballs for less than seventy-five.”

“Zorro isn't going to dig all this sudden shyness. Since when are you handling your own fees?”

“That's for Zorro to know, and you to guess. What's between me and César isn't any Chinaman's affair.”

Dorotea, Nicole, and Mauricette, Odile's three steadiest dancing partners, arrived at the door to gloat over the spectacle of a Chinaman with one high shoe. Janice pushed them back inside The Dwarf, Dorotea taking Odile by the hand and leading her to the dance floor, six square feet of splintered boards between the jukebox and the bar. Janice controlled the music; the girls had to dance to Peggy Lee and Rosemary Clooney or retire to the back room, where they could sip rum Cokes, study the divinations in the
Book of Changes
, or soulkiss over parcheesi boards (the cousins wouldn't permit any other show of passion).

Odile was abrupt with Dorotea; she didn't need a tongue in her ear while she was considering the Chinaman; she could still see his absurd hair under the curtainrod. She remembered what Janice could do to a drunken male who stumbled into The Dwarf by mistake, or a huffy police officer who tried to take the bar without proper papers—a broken finger, a wrenched armpit, a cheekful of blood—and Janice would be remanded to the Women's House for her zeal at The Dwarf. Odile couldn't explain why, but she didn't want the Chinaman hurt. Perhaps it was his chivalry in wearing the boot. The Chinaman knew what could please her; not gifts of perfume, not mink stoles which any furrier could produce, but a freak shoe. Dorotea switched from the left ear to the right. “Sis, why don't you explore Nicole?” Odile said. “Leave my roots alone.” She followed Sweeney into the back room. Sweeney was the only one who didn't paw her, who didn't lick her ears when they danced. A pair of parcheesi players, noticing Odile and Sweeney, moved to another location. Sweeney had the darkest corner in the place for Odile.

“Having man trouble, baby? You could always come live with me. You wouldn't starve. And you wouldn't need pig money either.”

Odile was humming Peggy Lee. She couldn't get off the Chinaman. She hissed Chino Reyes, Chino Reyes, between refrains of “Golden Earrings,” Peggy's 1947 hit. She wasn't going to sleep with a yellow nigger, one of Zorro's employees. Was she responsible for the stolen shoe? How could she stop a Chinaman from being crazy about her? She pushed away the parcheesi men, yawned into a fist, and slept against Sweeney's shoulderpadding.

6
Along Columbus Avenue he was known as the supercop. They badgered him about a lost monkey, a stolen television set, cousins who had been shaken down by the local police. After seeing a First Deputy car outside his stoop so many years (Isaac developed his best theories playing checkers with Coen), they figured Coen had an ear to the Commissioner. The woman who lived over him, a widow with a young Dalmatian, was worried about the safety of her dog. There had been an epidemic of dog poisonings in and around Central Park, and Mrs. Dalkey wanted Coen to catch the poisoner without fail. She offered him fifteen dollars for his troubles, coming down to his apartment every morning with Rickie the Dalmatian to keep him abreast of the most current poisoning. Coen couldn't abide the dog. He was a sniveler, spoiled by Mrs. Dalkey, in the habit of leaving pee drops on Coen's doorsill.

“Detective Coen, Detective Coen.”

Coen slumped to the door in pajamas. He could hear Rickie scratch the walls and chew paint The dog nosed his way in. Coen expected pee on his furniture. He offered Mrs. Dalkey cherry soda and Polish salami. He had to provide for the dog before she would tell him anything. Rickie tore salami and drank out of a long-stemmed cup. Mrs. Dalkey couldn't eat so fast. “Convulsions,” she said. “Mr. James' poodle. Fredericka went off the leash. That killer infested the rock garden on Seventy-second Street. Fredericka coughed up stones. She dropped dead trying to chase her tail. Mrs. Santiago thinks she saw him. A small Puerto Rican who gives candy to infants. He lives at the welfare hotel. I'm positive. He could also be the lipstick freak.”

“Why Mrs. Dalkey?”

“Because a man who hates dogs is more likely to hunt little boys. Poisoners and sex criminals have the same mind.”

Widow's tale, Coen told himself. He thanked Dalkey for her ideas and cleaned up after the dog. He rode the IRT into the Bronx. There had been too many mentions of César Guzmann, too many mutts running around with César in their heads. He would go to the source, Papa himself, for César and Child's girl. Papa might be planted on Boston Road but he had access to his five sons.

Moisés Guzmann reached Boston Road by way of Havana with a brood of small boys and no
mujer
, or wife. This was 1939. For sixty years Guzmanns had squatted in Lima, Peru, adopting the religion of the
limeños.
They were peddlers, smugglers, pickpockets, all citified men. They kept Hebrew luck charms in their catechism books. They prayed to Moses, John the Baptist, and Saint Jerome. Regular churchgoers shunned them. Others looked away. The Guzmanns considered themselves Hollanders, though they couldn't speak a word of Dutch. Before the Americas the family drifted through Lisbon, Amsterdam, and Seville. The Guzmanns of Peru had no memory of these other places. Moisés ran from Lima because he murdered a cop. Alone with five boys, he became “Papa” to the
norteamericanos.
He bought a candy store and moved into the back room. He sacrificed his love for guavas and pig knuckles, and taught himself to make the watery coffee and sweetened seltzer that the gringos adored. Occupied with his candies and his boys (in 1939 César was under two), Papa took seven years to establish a North American pickpocket ring. Cousins arrived from Peru. During one period fourteen men and boys lived in Papa's candy store. The cousins married, plunged into Brooklyn or New Jersey, and Papa had to retrench. He acquired permission from the Bronx police and the five main Jewish gangs to establish a policy operation in the store. The five gangs destroyed themselves and left Papa the numbers king of Boston Road.

Coen's train creaked out of the 149th Street tunnel, pushing toward the elevated station at Jackson Avenue in the Bronx. At the spot where the train first touched light the tunnel walls were clotted with a hard gray slime that had frightened Coen as a boy and still could bother him. That movement under ground, from the Jackson Avenue pillars into the flats of the tunnel, walls closing in around the subway cars, made Coen seasick on the IRT, and he would arrive nauseous at Music and Art, hating the egg sandwiches in his lunch bag. The stops from Jackson to Prospect to Intervale to Simpson to Freeman Street numbed Coen, drove him into his own head. From the Simpson Street station you could almost pick carrots off the windows of the Bronx Hotel; twice he had seen colored girls undress; he recalled the torn matting of his seat, the underpants of the second girl, the specific angle the train made with the window ledge, minimizing Coen's view, forcing him to hold his neck at an incredible degree or lose all command of the window.

He came down from the subway at 174th Street, where Southern Boulevard bisects Boston Road. He didn't go straight to Papa. The candy store was a main policy drop, and Coen might frighten off a few of Papa's runners. So he gave the store enough time to react to a foreign cop in the neighborhood. He stayed across the street, near the Puerto Rican social club which served as a lookout for Papa. The club members eyed him from their curtainrod. Coen revealed a piece of his holster. He wanted the Puerto Ricans to make him. He felt relieved when they signaled to the candy store by flapping bunches of curtain. They leered at him and mouthed the Spanish word for fairy. Coen smiled. Then he moved into the store. Papa's runners and pickup men were concentrated at the shelves devoted to school supplies. They were tallying policy slips with their backs to Coen. Nobody stirred for him. Papa was behind the counter preparing banana splits for a tribe of cross-eyed girls sitting on his stools. The girls, with thick glass in their eyes, must have been sisters or cousins at least. They thumped the stools and wailed with pleasure when Papa brought over a big jar of maraschino cherries. Being a fat policy man didn't get Papa to neglect his ice cream dishes. He wouldn't look at Coen until he satisfied every girl. “Sprinkles, Mr. Guzmann. Marietta expects another cherry.”

With the girls rubbing their bellies and wearing hot sauce on their cheeks, Papa came out from the counter to hug Coen. They embraced near Papa's Bromo-Seltzer machine. He wasn't timid about showing affection for a cop. He could kiss Coen without repercussions. No one but Papa controlled the candy store. He stayed king because of this. He squatted over his provinces with one finger in the chocolate sauce. Every individual runner, pickup man, and payoff man had to report to the candy store. Papa's three middle sons, Alejandro, Topal, and Jorge, ran for him when they weren't fixing sodas or frying eggs. His other collectors were South American cousins, retired Jews, busted cops like Isaac, or
portorriqueños
who owed their livelihood to Papa. Any runner who grew independent and bolted with the day's receipts had twenty-four hours to redeem himself; after this period of grace he was ripe for Papa's dumping grounds at Loch Sheldrake, New York. Whoever accompanied the reprobate to Loch Sheldrake would say, “Moses, I'm working for Moses.” In matters of business Papa demanded that his code name be used.

“Papa, where's Jerónimo?”

“Ah, that dummy, he walked into the next borough to be with his brother. He can't swallow a marshmallow without César. I'm only his stinking father. I bathed him forty-three years. Manfred, you remember how Jerónimo went gray at fifteen? Imbeciles worry more than we do. Their arteries dry fast. They don't live too long. You ask me, he's smarter than Jorge. Jerónimo counts with his knuckles, but he counts to thirty-five. Jorge can't go over ten without mistakes. They're good boys, all prick and no brain. Am I supposed to make fudge the whole day and forget Jerónimo? César won't bring him back.”

“Should I collect him for you, Papa? Tell me where César is. I need him for something else.”

“He keeps ten addresses, that boy. So who's the moron? Manfred, he's a baby. He had to fly from here. They'll cripple him in Manhattan.”

“How did Jerónimo find him, Papa?”

“With his nose. You develop your smell living around sweets. What do boroughs mean? Sweat can carry across a river.”

“What about Isaac? Where's Isaac?”

Papa stared at the banana splits. “Which one? Isaac Big Nose? Or Isaac Pacheco?”

“My Isaac,” Coen said. “The Chief.”

“Him?” And Coen had to face the wrath in Papa's yellow teeth. He'll curse his family with devotion, Coen thought; not strangers or cops. “I leave the bones for Isaac. He picks my garbage pail.”

“Papa, since when are you so particular about one busted cop? You have pensioned detectives fronting for you, you keep old precinct hands on the street. You should use him, Papa. Isaac has the biggest brain in the five boroughs.”

“So smart he got caught with a gambler's notebook in his pocket.”

“Somebody stuffed him. I can't say who. Isaac won't talk to me.”

“I say he's a skell and a thief. I took him in because I'm ashamed to see another Jew starve on Boston Road. The city has charity. I have charity. No one can tell me Moses doesn't provide. Manfred, how's the uncle?”

“Papa, he looks fine. He can't stop thinking about my father.”

“I mean to visit. I'm not comfortable away from the store. But I owe it to Sheb. He was kind to Jerónimo. You remember how your uncle could paint an egg. Him and César, they were the only two could take Jerónimo's mind off chocolate and the halvah.”

The girls screamed for Papa; they wanted second helpings. Papa hissed back. “Quiet. You're at the mercy of the house. Free refills come at Papa's convenience.” He asked Coen to stay.

“Can't,” Coen gagged; the aromas off the counter had begun to take hold. He was incapacitated by the imprint of Jelly Royals under sticky paper, lollipop trays, pretzels in a cloudy jar. Papa couldn't have changed syrups or his brand of malt in thirty-five years; the sweetness undid Coen. He saw Jerónimo go gray. His throat locked with thick fudge. House, house, is Moses in the house? If César could steal pretzels, so could Coen. In twenty years of patronizing the store, Coen stole no more than twice. He had a fierce respect for the old man. It was Moses who wired him the money to come home from the barracks at Bad Kreuznach after his mother and father died. And it wasn't Papa's fault it took three weeks for the money to find Coen. Sheb knew where he was. But Sheb wouldn't open his mouth.