Jorge grew somber under the scarves, blouse, and skirts. He pushed the apples down to his waist. He hobbled on the boardwalk. Zorro couldn’t get to Arkansas Avenue without buying more candy fish for his brother.
2.
“THE dark bottles, Sammy, if you please. In the usual tub. I’ve a thirst on me could destroy a hippopotamus.”
Patrick Silver drank his Guinness warm. It came from Dublin in tiny bottles that were packed religiously behind the counter. The Kings of Munster couldn’t fail its principal client. An Irish bar on Horatio Street, it was never out of Guinness.
Silver needed his twenty nips. He would stumble into the Kings of Munster exhausted from his tribulations at the synagogue. The barman had a pitcher waiting for him after evening prayer. It was Patrick’s lot to raise a minyan (a quorum of ten upright Jews) for his shul. He had a curious affinity for capturing Jews. He would roost on the steps of the synagogue and chirp at passers-by, whether infant, man, or boy. “Are you Jewish, sir?” If you hesitated for a moment you were lost. Patrick would swipe at you from the stairs, clutch an arm, and haul you in. He could carry two men or three boys in a single trip. Having Jerónimo made it easier for him. He would stick a prayer shawl over the baby’s head and include him in the minyan. Jerónimo’s mewls didn’t upset the minyan’s droning music. If he was short one Jew, Patrick had his prayer book. He would wrap it in the fringes of his shawl, pronounce a blessing, and the prayer book became Patrick’s tenth man.
But the strain of so many minyans was beginning to tell on Patrick, who had to mind the synagogue and the baby. So he sat in the Kings of Munster on the stool he preferred, away from the window and the dog shit on Horatio Street that traveled so fast in July; it was dangerous for an Irishman to be out of doors. “God bless,” he said to barman Sam before drinking from the pitcher.
Silver nursed his bottles. He didn’t grow a Guinness mustache until the fifth bottle had been poured. The Kings of Munster wasn’t a bar for guzzlers. Patrick nibbled on the beer, scooping in the bitter foam with his tongue. He loathed American beer, pissy blond water that could have been brewed in a bubble-pipe. Silver was a Guinness child, bom with a black bottle in his mouth. His da, who made pencils in Limerick until a mad priest chased out all the Jews, took him to the Kings of Munster when he was a month old and sat him on the bar. Patrick learned to crawl this way, on a bumpy sheet of iron that was galvanized with whiskey and Dublin beer. He didn’t have to sneak his nose into a gentleman’s pitcher. He drank his Guinness right off the bar, wanned over with a slight taste of zinc.
By the twelfth bottle Patrick had mustaches on three sides of his face. He began to croon his father’s songs about the witches, giants, toads of Limerick, and the burning of Wolftone Street. Pissed in the head, with Guinness blowing out of his ears, he saw a wicked Chrysler pass the Kings’ window three times. Patrick spit into his hand to scare off any avenging angel who might be hovering near Horatio Street. He knew the owner of the car, and its principal passenger. He said goodbye to Sammy, picked up his britches, and hobbled out of the bar.
It was treacherous to go around the bend of Abingdon Square in stockings alone. But Patrick couldn’t wear shoes. Leather bands on his feet gave him ungodly blisters. As a cop he’d been at the mercy of his superiors: the PC wouldn’t allow unshod detectives near his office. Patrick had to stuff cotton balls through the neck of every shoe in his closet. He walked on cotton for thirteen years, howling at the number of blisters he endured. The medics at Bellevue had never heard of a cop with such sensitive feet. Patrick avoided the chiropodists and their talk of miraculous foot powders. He would hop about in agony when he had to chase a thief.
Now he was watching for dog shit. He curtsied up close to the benches of Abingdon Square park, suspicious of the gray areas between lampposts. He was a bit nearsighted in the evening. He didn’t notice the baldish head inside the park until it hissed at him. “Silver, come here.”
Patrick groaned. “I could tell that was you in the First Deputy’s car. Why the fuck are you following me?”
The man on the bench was Isaac, Isaac the Brave, who’d left his ruddy cheeks in the Bronx. And most of his handsomeness. He had splits in his forehead that wouldn’t go away in the dark. His jaw sat crookedly on the spindles of his neck. A Guzmann must have slapped back Isaac’s teeth.
“Patrick, it isn’t fair for you to ignore us. Commissioner Ned was a mother to you. He raised you at Headquarters. You ought to visit him once before he dies.”
“If I ever went near Headquarters, you’d put me in chains and clip off my toes.”
“Your head could stand some clipping … where’s Jerónimo?”
Patrick began to falter in his black socks. He knew all the First Deputy tricks. Isaac hadn’t waylaid him in the park just for a chat. These were clever people. Isaac’s “children” had to be poking about, angelic boy detectives who wouldn’t have been ashamed to sack an old shul. Patrick had to run home before the angels kidnapped Jerónimo. But the Guinness had clubbed him behind the ears. He couldn’t march with two tangled legs.
“I asked you where Jerónimo was.”
“Isaac, me darling,” Patrick said, putting on his best Irish, a brogue that had been nurtured in a Bethune Street synagogue, around a dwindling band of “Hebes” who hadn’t seen Ireland in sixty-nine years. “The lad’s asleep. We had a feast today. Chocolate pie from his father’s candy store. He likes to nap after a big meal.”
“Is there any blood on his fingers?”
“Why?”
“Because he’s been playing on the roofs.”
A young boy had been found on the roofs above Charles Street with a ripped neck. Someone had crayoned his eyes, ears, and lips in dark red. Homicide squads from Manhattan South were scouring the district for possible child murderers.
“Isaac, you’re full of barley. The lad never goes higher than the ground floor. He can’t function near windows and fire escapes. Wouldn’t I know? We’ve been stuck together for a month. I’m with him every minute.”
Isaac came out of the shadows. There wasn’t a single curl on his face. He had rough patches where his sideburns used to be. He seemed bereft without his tufts of hair. But he could still hiss at a man.
“No wonder Jerónimo lives with you. That’s a perfect couple, you and the baby. Patrick, you’re the dumbest detective in human history. The First Dep was your survival kit. You would have drowned years ago without his devotion. If you can account for Jerónimo minute by minute, where is he now?”
Black fumes bubbled out of Patrick’s nose: he was snorting air and Guinness at Father Isaac. “Didn’t I say the lad was asleep?”
He managed to push off, get himself beyond the park and Abingdon Square. His legs were carrying him. His knees held. He could ignore Isaac’s whistles. “Get a pair of shoes, you son-of-a-bitch.” He was over the gutters, onto the curb of Bethune Street. “If you don’t deliver Jerónimo to me, I’ll put rat poison in your beer. Your lungs will smoke. Silver, stay off my streets.” He didn’t have to position the fall of his toes. An Irishman always landed well. Patrick couldn’t miss. He banged into the shul, striking one of the awning rods with his skull. “Jesus,” he muttered, with a lump on his head. He went under the stoop, fumbling for his latchkey. Pissed blind, he couldn’t contend with a keyhole.
“God of Esau,” he said, “come to me.” He cursed Jacob and Rebekah, who had swindled Esau out of his birthright. Esau was a hairy man, like Patrick Silver and Jerónimo. But Patrick had no birthright to lose. His father left him a prayer shawl with plucked tassels and the obligation to preserve a synagogue for Irish waifs.
The key turned in Patrick’s hand, and the synagogue unlocked itself. He stumbled towards his room, afraid to peek for Jerónimo. He heard snores behind the wall. He thanked the God of Esau for preserving hairy men. He opened the door. Jerónimo was in Patrick’s bed, under a summer blanket. The blanket rose with the thrust of his snores. The baby drooled in his sleep; a piece of t
he blanket was wet. Patrick didn’t care. He’d slept in the baby’s spittle before.
3.
ISAAC the Brave drank his slug of castor oil and went into the craphouse. It was part of his Wednesday morning routine. The craphouse belonged to Presbyterian hospital. Isaac had to donate specimens to the tropical diseases lab. Technicians examined his stool once a week. The Chief had a worm in his gut, spiteful and intelligent, eight feet long, with hooks and many suckers.
Isaac’s worm was the prize of tropical diseases. Doctors and technicians couldn’t remember another worm that thrived so spectacularly in a man. They would shoot dyes into Isaac to fluoroscope the worm.
“Inspector Sidel, are you sure you haven’t been to South America? This isn’t 1905. Nobody picks up a pork tapeworm in Manhattan any more.”
The Chief began to dread his walks to the craphouse. He left the hospital weakened by castor oil. But he didn’t have to crawl to Headquarters like a wounded bear. His chauffeur would bring him downtown.
Detective-sergeant Brodsky was waiting outside the hospital in Isaac’s enormous Chrysler. He couldn’t warm to the Chief’s new look. Isaac had gone into the Bronx with curly sideburns. He came out with ashes in his nose, his Moroccan suspenders ruined: the supports were crusted with layers of white chocolate. His teeth were brown. His hair had the disordered feel of plucked chicken feathers. The Chief was all gray. Six Guzmanns in a candy store had sucked on his marrow. It couldn’t have been a small winter for Isaac. Papa Guzmann didn’t allow hibernations on Boston Road.
The Chief stumbled over to the Chrysler. “Brodsky, a little boy was killed on Charles Street. They brought him down from the roof. He had red shit on his face. Isn’t that familiar to you?”
Brodsky was trying to draw the shivers out of his neck. Isaac had startled him. Brodsky could live with grunts, but he hadn’t expected whole sentences from the grizzly bear.
“Isaac, it can’t be the lipstick freak. Didn’t Cowboy put him away? The guy is in the Tombs. A Puerto Rican dressmaker.”
“Cuban,” the Chief said. “And he never made dresses. They were dolls.”
The bear grew silent again. Brodsky maneuvered the Chrysler with a thumb. He felt some wind behind his ears.
“Are you going to take Cowboy’s word that our freak is still in jail?”
Chief of Detectives in the City of New York and president of the Hands of Esau (a brotherhood of Jewish cops), “Cowboy” Barney Rosenblatt was Isaac’s great rival at Headquarters. Cowboy could have squashed an ordinary police inspector, but Isaac worked for the most powerful cop in North America, First Deputy Commissioner Ned O’Roarke. The First Dep had a tumor in his throat. He wasn’t supposed to be alive. Cowboy couldn’t depend on the ravages of any disease. While Commissioner Ned sat in the First Deputy’s chair, the Chief of Detectives had to curtsy to Isaac the Brave.
“Isaac, why should Cowboy lie to us?”
“Because he’s a prick.”
The chauffeur was stuck. Who could question the logic of a bear? “A prick,” he muttered. “Definitely.” And he drove into the First Dep’s private ramp.
Isaac had to shuffle around an army of clerks. Headquarters was picking itself out of Centre Street. The City had built a huge red brick fortress for the Police Department near City Hall. The cops would have their own plaza and a building that was impregnable to thieves, revolutionists, and crumbling rock. Even with the Guzmanns pulling on his brain, Isaac was disheartened by the move. He didn’t want air-conditioned chambers and a memory bank that could give you the size of a criminal’s smelly blue sock. No data system could trap Papa Guzmann, or explain why Jerónimo wore earmuffs in June, July, and August.
Isaac had one of his “angels” call the Tombs. This angel reported back to the Chief. “Isaac, they lost their records on Ernesto, the lipstick freak. They don’t know where he is.”
“Then let them dig. If they can’t locate the cubano in five hours, I’ll have to bite the warden’s ass. You tell them that.”
This wasn’t the first prisoner who’d disappeared from the Tombs. A Corrections officer would arrive in a few days with evidence that a crocodile had swallowed the lipstick freak. There would be drawings of Ernesto inside the crocodile’s mouth, and a pocket saved from the freak’s chewed-up pants. Isaac went in to see Commissioner Ned.
Four sergeants patrolled the First Dep’s anteroom. Isaac had put them there. They discouraged crime reporters, nosy clerks, and police captains who thought they could improve their lot with genuflections to a dying Irish commissioner.
The First Dep sat in the corner, with a blanket over his knees. His green eyes were licked with dull yellow spots. Cobalt treatments had burnt his vocal cords and left him with a hoarse whisper. His yellowish eyes were a poor clue. O’Roarke’s mind didn’t drift, no matter how much of him had been eaten away. He ran Headquarters from his little chair, supervising the slow exodus from Centre Street.
His eyebrows didn’t bunch for Isaac. His wrists crept under the blanket. “Where’s Patrick Silver?”
Patrick had once been the darling of Ned O’Roarke. They were Limerick men, worshipers of the river Shannon. Patrick’s touch of Judaism couldn’t disturb Commissioner Ned. Irish Jews had lumps of Catholic tissue under their foreskins. Only Silver had crazied himself drinking Guinness and Irish coffee. He’d shot too many chickenshit thieves. He’d gone into pimps’ lairs waving his .45, with Guinness coming out of his eyeballs. The PC had to take his gun away. Silver was made into a clerk, a member of the rubber-gun squad. He jumped the First Deputy’s office, leaving his pension behind.
“Patrick’s in his synagogue, Commissioner Ned. Asleep. I’ve sent a few kites down to him. With regards from you and me. They landed in Silver’s park. My detectives have more kites to deliver. They’ll revive the sleeping beauty.”
Isaac left O’Roarke’s private room with a twitch in his gut. It could have been the worm. Or an outbreak of jealousy. Those Irishers liked to cuddle one another around the ears.
There were hyenas in the hall. Herbert Pimloe skulked with Cowboy Rosenblatt outside the First Dep’s office. Pimloe worked under Isaac. He was O’Roarke’s deputy whip. But he’d attached himself to Cowboy. The moment Commissioner Ned faltered in his chair, they would push down on Isaac’s scalp and tear the skin off his face.
“Cowboy, what happened on Charles Street? Tell me about the mutilated boy.”
Cowboy played with the studs on his holster and ignored the Chief. Isaac crept in front of Pimloe. “Wasn’t there lipstick on the little boy’s cheek? It sounds like an old story.”
“Herbert,” Cowboy said, leaning into Isaac to nudge Pimloe’s arm. “It’s the Rasties, aint that right? They’re into cult murders this time of the year.”
Headquarters was frightened to death of the Rastafarians, a community of black Jamaicans who worshiped King Haile Selassie and wore their hair twisted into long “dreadlocks” to resemble a lion’s mane. The Rastafarians had settled in Brooklyn and the Bronx, and were busy making war on these boroughs and murdering themselves.
“Cowboy, this is a different cult. The Rasties wouldn’t take a nine-year-old onto the roof. It’s the lipstick freak, or one of his brothers.”
“Yeah,” Cowboy said. “Jerónimo. Maybe I ought to send the homicide squad down on Papa’s baby. Who knows? All the Guzmanns could be lipstick freaks.”
“Don’t laugh. You wouldn’t have any dead boys if the Guzmanns stayed in Peru.”
“Isaac, I’m sick of your theories about Jerónimo. That boy’s a white-haired dummy. Just because you hate the Guzmanns, it don’t mean they produced the freak. The freak is in the Tombs, and I put him there.”
“Cowboy, guess again. Ernesto is missing. Somebody walked the dollmaker out of the Tombs.”
Isaac didn’t send for his chauffeur. He crossed the Bowery with his own feet. No one waved to him from the barber colleges and the candy stores. Once Isaac had been the only bishop of the Puerto Rican-Jewish East Side.
Merchants would rush out of their stores to kiss the bishop’s hand. A nod from Isaac meant prosperity. The old dueñas of Eldridge Street could walk with their purses dangling from their thumbs. They had big Isaac to retrieve any articles stolen from them. But Isaac had fallen out of touch with the landladies, grocers, and pensioners of his bishopric. The Guzmanns had pecked under his sideburns and devoured the white meat in his head. Isaac stumbled through the East Side like an unbrained bear.
He stopped at a dairy restaurant to guzzle five bowls of split-pea soup. Isaac had to feed his worm. The countermen weren’t impressed with Isaac’s devotion to split peas. They waited for the bear to climb off his stool. Isaac could corrupt a place with the sweat clinging to his nose.
The Chief had more than split peas on his mind. He was looking for his girlfriend Ida, who was head cashier of the Ludlow Street café. He couldn’t find her around the cash box, the butter tub, the vegetarian salamis, or the stove, where Ida loved to roll square pancakes for the blini and blinchiki that were a special feature of the house. Isaac made inquiries from his stool. The countermen shrugged at him. “Isaac, honest to God, she vanished one day. Don’t think she wasn’t loyal. She stared out the window month after month.”
“Myron,” Isaac said, with a finger inside the counterman’s shirt. “You’d be bankrupt without that girl. The blintzes would crack if she ran too far. So tell me where Ida is?”
“Home,” the counterman said. “She’s fixing her trousseau.”
“What trousseau?” Isaac said, with his lip stuck out.
“She has a suitor … he’s here. In the restaurant.”
Education of Patrick Silver Page 2