Authors: Jerome Charyn
“Boris, I'll remember him for you. I promise.”
The steerer was getting to like the Chinaman. “Chino, you have my approval, but please, don't mention it to Zorro. He'll pack me to Queens, in a box.”
“I'm no fink,” the Chinaman said.
“Chino, what can I do for you? Just ask.”
“Boris, there's a man, Solomon Wong, he used to scrape plates for my father in Cuba, an old man, I want him protected. He won't take money from me.”
“How much of a cosh?” Boris asked, being practical.
“Maybe ten a week.” The Chinaman went for his money clip. Boris shook his head.
“Ten a week? César will pay.”
“No. It's gotta come from me. Else it won't work.”
Boris accepted the Chinaman's money. He was ready to drive off. The Chinaman grabbed on to the limousine.
“Don't you want to know where to find him?”
“Who?”
“The dishwasher. Try the other lots. Or the flophouses.”
“Mister, how many Solomon Wongs can there be?”
Chino let go of the car. He was hurting for a gun. The bouncers at The Dwarf had his Colt They'd dropped it in a water pail when he rushed the joint for Odile. He would slap those two huskies after he finished with Coen. He couldn't buy a gun off one of his regular suppliers. The market was drying up with police agents everywhere; only the niggers would sell you a piece, and he couldn't go uptown that far. He missed his shoe, that humpbacked strip of leather. But he'd been getting touchy pictures of his father lately in his head each time he wore the shoe. The Chinaman was a believer; he had no compunctions about the credibility of ghosts. He was accountable to them, for sure. His father had mud in his scalp (a sign of unrest). To appease the ghost Chino hoped to make provisions for Solomon Wong. Perhaps his old father was destined to walk with a muddy head until Solomon, alive in this world, could be rescued from the lowly state of dishwasher and bindlestiff (a Cuban
vagabundo)
, and given a definite income, no matter how small. But he couldn't locate Solomon these days. And the ghosts had to be fed. So he got rid of the shoe. Heeding the growls in his stomach, he marched to Grand Street for cannoli and Sicilian almond water. Blue-eyes would come, only not this afternoon.
12
His ring-around-a-rosy with César and the Chinaman must have puffed out his heart. Coen, who swore he never dreamed, was dreaming three times a night. The dreams didn't involve the Guzmanns, the egg store, or the farm. Most of them were about his marriage, Coen redraping his fights with Stephanie, tucking under her crying spells and his tightmouthed, mummied looks with nothing more durable than spit, love-making spit, Coen crazied with the notion that if he penetrated his wife long enough their differences would dissolve. But the last of the dreams drifted off Coen's marriage and occurred in the stationhouse. Coen, a bachelored Coen, was called into the long and narrow yard at the side of the stationhouse (such yard serving as an outdoor gym, a mustering place, and a temporary morgue), to identify two bodies found on precinct turf. The bodies were housed in makeshift coffins (wicker baskets from a hospital laundry room padded with old blankets from the horse patrol). Coen recognized the baby fat through the wicker plaits. The girls had blue disfigured chicken necks and thickened tongues. The wickers had creased their flesh. Their eyes were swollen over with brown lumps. They bled from their teeth. The captain's man must have crossed their fingers and bent their legs together; they couldn't have died in such a benign position. Coen touched Judith first He didn't want a scrubby horse blanket on his girl. There were bugs in the basket, water beetles. Coen injured them with his thumbs, but he couldn't go far enough, and the beetles turned over on their backs and made disgusting noises through the cracks in their shells. Coen undressed in the yard. He put his coat under Alice, and stuffed Judith's coffin with trouser legs. The morgue wagon arrived, purring gas. Coen still hadn't determined who called him into the yard. The squad commander? Brodsky? Pimloe? Coen's sometime partner, Detective Brown?
He woke spitting Isaac's name. His nose was stiff with mucus. It was three in the morning by his own clock. He got out of bed in a shiver, with unreliable knees. He had involved Stephanie in his own dreck. But he couldn't slap the Chinaman again on account of one lousy dream. He wore his detective suit (herringbone, gray on gray), shaved the pesty hairs under his nose, and went to Stephanie's block. He badgered her night doorman, sticking him in the ribs with his gold shield. “Mrs. Nerval needs me. I'm a relative of hers and a cop.” The doorman didn't like cops in his building after midnight. He dangled the plugs of the intercom with a nervous fist. He got Charles. “Dr. Nerval, sorry Dr. Nerval, a gentleman here, says he's connected to your wife. He's holding a badge on me.”
Coen heard Charles sputter through the plugs. He put away his shield. “I want Mrs. Nerval, not him.”
“Dr. Nerval, the gentleman asks for your wife.”
Coen stuck his mouth near the wires. “Charlie, don't be such a shit. It's important. Let me up.”
“Coen, it's four o'clock. You think dentists never sleep? I have two girls in the other room.”
Charles wore his slippers for the cop. He wished Coen would chase his wife during proper hours. He was in love with both of his dental assistants, Puerto Rican girls with delicate moustaches and narrow waists. But Charles was too shrewd to shake up the equilibrium at his clinic. He wouldn't pursue Rita or Beatriz until they left him for a better job. He confined himself to hurried squeezes of a thigh whenever his patients, mostly old men, fell asleep in the dentist chair.
Stephanie came out of her bedroom in a clumsy wraparound showing a good deal of skin. She had enough sense not to fool with Coen. “Freddy, sit down.” Charles looked once at a pocket of veins on Stephanie's thigh and considered how lucky he was to have Rita and Beatriz.
“Steffie, wake up Judith and Alice, please.”
Charles clutched his pajamas. “The captain's giving orders. Stephanie, meet your men friends outside the building from now on. The guy downstairs will call us gypsies soon.”
“Charlie, let him finish. Make some toast for us or go to bed.”
Coen tried not to stare at his old wife; it was the crooked fall of the wraparound, the puffs of cloth, that roused him, not the bared skin. “Take the girls to Charlie's mother. Get them to Connecticut. Right away.”
“He's simple-minded,” Charles said. “He's demented, that's what he is. He thinks we run a shuttle for little girls. Stephanie, tell him to find other people to annoy.”
“Fred, does it have something to do with that Chinese boy?”
“Chino Reyes was hired to do a tickle job. I offended his master. The Guzmanns say I'm a spy.”
“Is Isaac in the middle of this?” Stephanie said. She still had a grudge against the Chief; Isaac was the one who had stepped into their marriage, manipulated Coen, masterminded plots that kept him away from her.
“Who's the China boy?” Charles said. “Why can't the girls sleep in their own beds?”
“The Chinaman has funny rules. Hell slap anybody who's close to me. He's been sneaking looks at Judith and Alice in the park.”
Charles wandered around the parlor, grim-faced, his teasing manner gone. “It's Coen's fault. A cop who lies down with crooks. Stephanie, why'd you divorce him if you meant to bring him home? He'll get the babies killed. I'm going to call the police.”
“Charlie, you're looking at the police.”
“You? You're no cop. I know about Isaac Sidel. He dressed you, he made you up, and left you with your finger in your ass. You can't cross the street without Isaac. I hear it plenty from detectives in the Bronx. You were perfect for wagging a chief's tail. Stephanie, bundle up the girls. I'll drive them to mama. Coen, do me a favor. Don't come back.”
“They'll only be in Connecticut a few days,” Coen muttered. He was ashamed to tell Stephanie that all his suspicions came from a dream. But the image of Judith and Alice in straw coffins seemed perfectly valid to Coen. There was too much pulp in the wickers for him to ignore. Charles fixed Alice but Stephanie lingered with Judith's sock so she could talk to Coen. “Be careful, Freddy. Make peace with the Guzmanns, and get out.”
She hugged him in front of Charles and the girls, held him in a wifely way, without shifting her tongue, and Coen felt his nervousness go but he couldn't get rid of his dread; lost father, lost mother, lost Coen. Stephanie perceived the animal sharpness of his body, the twitches in his chest, and she wished she could have two husbands instead of one. Charles began to nag. “Coen, she'll continue the massage tomorrow. Damn it, Stephanie, can't you hate him, just a tiny bit, for bringing your daughters into his stinking life? I'm only their father. I don't count.”
Hunching past the doorman, Coen made the street. He walked with his eyes deep in his head, spooking cab drivers on Central Park West; they saw a herringbone man with a hard stare. Now, facing Columbus, five blocks down from Stephanie and Charles, he could consider how relieved he was to find the girls still alive. Coen wouldn't attribute any wizardry to his dream. But the straw coffins outside the stationhouse shoved him closer to his father's oven, made him peek into the stove. Stuffed with Albert, it was easy for him to credit Judith and Alice with chicken necks. Approaching his corner, he had to choose each of his steps to avoid a tangle of elderly women and men. They were pummeling a
cubano
into the ground, an SRO from Spanish Arnold's hotel. Coen recognized their leader, the Widow Dalkey, his neighbor, who was also the captain of the block. The
cubano's
arms were covered with fists and claws. He was hugging something against his belly. He had scratches around the eyes. Coen pushed himself into the war party. He took Mrs. Dalkey's fist off the
cubano's
cheek. She wailed and spit until she saw it was Coen. A Pomeranian with blood in its nose dropped between the
cubano's
legs. Mrs. Dalkey blew hot air at Coen. “We caught him, Detective Coen. We caught the filthy bum. He won't murder dogs no more.” She pointed to a cracked dish near one of the trees that she had planted for the block. “He fed Mimsey poison in a lump of steak.” The Pomeranian could no longer raise her head. Her nipples had begun to swell.
Coen stood between the
cubano
and Dalkey's people. He didn't have enough ambition to march him to the nearest stationhouse with Dalkey on his toes, petting the dying Pomeranian, and holding it as evidence. The
cubano
could answer “Yes” and “No” in English, and nothing more. He shivered up against Coen, preferring to show the side of his face to a few old men rather than Mrs. Dalkey. He was wearing stale perfume. “Beast,” Mrs. Dalkey hissed through the wall of old men. When she decided that Coen couldn't satisfy her, she summoned a rookie cop from Broadway. The rookie was thick in the pants with paraphernalia; handcuffs, holster, club, cartridge belt, memorandum book, and pencil case. His name was Morgenstern. A pin from one of the fraternal orders for Jewish cops was tacked to his blouse. Coen had the same pin, but he never wore it; during the time of his marriage the Society of the Hands of Esau had informed him that it could not provide burial space for non-Jewish wives. Coen and Stephanie would have to lie in different cemeteries, according to the society's bylaws. Coen turned over his future grave to an indigent Jewish cop who hadn't kept up his premiums and wanted to be buried on the society's grounds.
“You take the collar,” Coen said. “It's your beat. But be sure these ladies and gentlemen don't tear him to pieces before you get to the house.”
The rookie insisted on shaking Coen's hand. This was only his third arrest. The bulls at his precinct were much stingier than Coen. They didn't give “collars” away. And they wouldn't talk to him on the street.
“Officer Morgenstern,” Mrs. Dalkey said. “He's the lipstick freak, I bet. I can tell a pervert by the sweat in their eyes.”
The rookie dug for his memorandum book. His pencil snapped on the “f” of freak. He got one from Mrs. Dalkey with a better point.
Coen shouted his telephone number. “Call me after they bring him upstairs.”
“What should I do with the dog, Mr. Coen?”
“Give it to Dalkey. And don't forget the dish.”
The rookie had to be content with second place, behind Mrs. Dalkey, who gathered her people, the dog, and the dog dish. Coen couldn't reach his building without walking through her procession. The rookie called him in under two hours.
“They broke him, Coen. The lady was right. He used to be a dollmaker. He hasn't worked in years. He coaxed those kids onto the roofs. He used an Exacto knife on them from his doll kit. He has play dresses at home. For old dolls. The freak tried to fit the dresses on the kids. He marked them up with his grease pencils. He gave each of them a new set of lips. He couldn't fool the bulls.”
Coen turned around on his bed. “Morgenstern, they must have some pretty sharp heads over there. That
cubano
couldn't even speak his name in English. Did they find any doll dresses on him? And why does he poison dogs?”
“I don't know.”
Coen figured Morgenstern might be less jubilant by the middle of the afternoon. The bulls would probably erase him from their report. Having a rookie put his fingers on the lipstick freak could take away from their prestige.
Irene, alias the Widow, alias Mrs. Dalkey, couldn't have been widowed, because she'd never been a wife. She was born in a foundling hospital on Delancey Street, and was given the name Irene by a hospital nun. The plumber Frankensteen and his wife, a petulant woman unwilling to suffer through a childbirth of her own, adopted Irene and brought her to Frankensteen's cellar shop, where they also had their living quarters. As soon as Irene learned all the habits of speech (around the age of three or four), Mrs. Frankensteen confounded the little girl over the state of her birth, telling her she was an “elf child,” a changeling dropped on the stairs of the hospital by some rich uptown woman who didn't want the nuisance of being a mother. Thus Irene became aware of her illegitimacy. At P.S. 23 on Mulberry Street (fifty years later the Chinaman would attend this same school), Irene began to ponder the doubleness of her life: rich lady's girl fobbed off to the Frankensteens. She fell behind in her studies and was taken out of school to serve as a laundress (Irene was under twelve). Boys and older men fumbled with her at the laundry, undoing the strings of her apron while she soaped table linen from a Twenty-third Street mansion and continued to ponder the possibilities of another life.