Education of Patrick Silver

by Jerome Charyn

  “Isaac, did you swallow your thumb? What’s wrong?”

  He slapped around in the water, his knees over his head. He gobbled sounds to Kathleen, who thought her husband was having a fit. He grew pale. His pectorals began to wag. “Worm,” he said. “Strangle me. Have to feed the worm.”

  She didn’t laugh at his talk of worms. The bear was whimpering. Then he whistled through his teeth. “Yogurt. Gimme yogurt.”

  “Isaac, there’s no food in the house. I’m only in New York one day a month.”

  Seeing Isaac grimace, she ran upstairs to her pantry. The shelves were vacant except for a box of tea and an old honey jar. She brought the jar down to Isaac and fed him globs of honey with a spoon. Isaac shivered. The spoon couldn’t revive him quick enough. He snatched the jar and ate honey with his tongue. The paleness was gone. Isaac the Brave had sticky cheeks.

  “Should I ring the doorman for a chicken bone? I could boil your shoelaces in a cup of tea?”

  “It isn’t funny,” Isaac said. “I caught a tapeworm from the Guzmanns.”

  “Is it contagious, Isaac? Like the clap? You shouldn’t have been so intimate with that family.”

  “Intimate? Those cocksuckers poisoned me.”

  Isaac hunkered down in the tub until his lips touched water. Even the most powerful cop in the City had to soak his balls. The Chief was coming apart. His people had fallen away from him. His father deserted the Sidels when Isaac was eighteen. His mother had been beaten up by a gang of teenage lunatics. She lay in a coma for seven months and died in her sleep while Isaac was in the Bronx with Papa Guzmann. His daughter was in Seattle. Marilyn the Wild ran around the country collecting husbands and discarding them. His angel Manfred was dead because of him. Isaac dropped Coen into his war with the Guzmanns and couldn’t get him out in time to preserve the angel’s neck. His benefactor, Ned O’Roarke, sat in the First Deputy’s chair with a tumor in his throat, and presided over his own death for six years. And his wife Kathleen preferred her share of Florida to Isaac’s company.

  The tapeworm interested Kathleen. She liked the idea of a tiny animal tugging at Isaac’s gut. His suffering began to excite her. He was less of a holy cop with his mouth twisting into a scream. She took off her robe and stepped into the tub with Isaac. The Chief made a powerful snort. It was the old days for Isaac: the college boy waiting to suckle his Irish beauty. He couldn’t outgrow his early lusts. He would have been willing to die with his face in Kathleen’s chest.

  Both of them hopped in the water as they heard a row of disgustingly loud bleats. Kathleen tried to shake the noise out of her ears. “I’m deaf, by God,” she squealed. Isaac had to climb around her legs and root for his clothes. He found the automatic pager under a towel on Kathleen’s commode. He clicked off the screaming, idiotic thing and apologized to his wife. “Sorry. Can’t be helped. That’s how my men keep in touch with me.”

  He dialed his office from the phone in Kathleen’s dressing room. Pimloe took the call. “Isaac, the Guzmanns are off the street again.”

  “Are they living in a gutted synagogue?”

  “No.”

  “Herbert, don’t get elliptical with me. Where’s Papa and his boys?”

  “They moved into a bar.”

  “What bar?”

  “The Kings of Munster. On Horatio Street.”

  “Herbert, how do you think they got there?”

  “I dunno. Is Papa fond of Irish whiskey?”

  “Schmuck, St. Patrick sneaked them in. That’s his bar. He grew up on Horatio Street. He’ll feed Papa Guinness for a while.”

  “Should we burn them out?”

  “Herbert, shut your face. I’ll attend to Papa.”

  “Isaac, don’t worry. I have a boy on every roof that connects with the Munster bar. The baby can’t walk an inch without our knowing it. Jerónimo’s in trouble if we catch him near a roof.”

  “That’s good, Herbert. Goodbye.”

  Pimloe had become Isaac’s dedicated whip. Without Cowboy Rosenblatt, he lost his own ambitions and trapped mosquitoes, gnats, and Guzmanns for Isaac. The Chief went into the bathroom with a smile. He wanted Kathleen and his tub. But the real estate goddess was at her vanity table in a blouse and skirt. “Airport,” she said. “I’m going now.”

  Isaac grabbed up his clothes and left Kathleen with Blue Eyes, Marilyn, and Jerónimo bubbling in his fat commissioner’s skull.

  Part Three

  11.

  RABBI Hughie Prince, who read the Talmud with a glazier’s strict eye, had declared that any body of land with a roof and four walls could qualify as a synagogue, so long as it housed the holy ark. And Patrick Silver had planted his father’s closet in the storage room at the Kings of Munster. Sammy Doyle, the Kings’ publican, was shrewd enough to allow the old Jews of Congregation Limerick to pray in his storage room. If Patrick Silver carried his shul into another neighborhood, the Kings of Munster would have to close. Patrick was half of Sammy’s trade. The Irish of Abingdon Square showed up at Doyle’s bar to drink with the Limerick giant.

  Sammy had his problems. The Guzmanns caused him grief. He’d never heard of a shul with five permanent boarders. His customers would talk about the gypsies who lived with him. They blocked traffic into the Kings of Munster. The bar had to accommodate a steady flow of witch doctors (Papa brought them in to change Jorge’s bandages and chant over the boy’s shattered legs). A stink came out of the sanctuary that clung to the bar for days. Papa was roasting chickens in the storage room. The witch doctors had demanded this offering of chicken flesh to appease the ancient god Baal, protector of the cities, who could heal a crippled boy or wash him into the gutters, depending on his mood.

  The publican had to tolerate the stink. He couldn’t bother Patrick about it. Silver was in love with the little goya from Jane Street. Sammy had to comfort him when he stumbled into the bar asking for bottles of Guinness. The publican remembered him as a boy. Everybody thought he’d be bigger than the old Munster giant, Cruathair O’Carevaun, who destroyed the harbor at Cork in a fit of rage after he was ordered out of a sailor’s brothel somewhere in 1709 (the girls were frightened of what lay under Cruathair’s pants). But the Limerick giant stopped growing at twelve. Patrick would stay six-foot-three for the rest of his natural life.

  Saying “God bless” with Guinness on his cheek, he moped through the Kings of Munster, which was now a synagogue, a saloon, and a boardinghouse. He left the Kings in his own fit of rage. He was trying to shorten Odile’s list of suitors. He would park himself on Jane Street with one of Sammy’s brooms (he lost his shillelagh in the fire) and scare away the men who arrived with flowers and little gifts for Odile. Patrick stood chest to cheek with Pimloe (Herbert was a lot shorter than the Limerick giant) twice a day. Pimloe would dance under Patrick’s nose and swear, “I’ll crush you, St. Patrick. Do you know who I am? I’m Isaac’s new whip. The First Dep can’t blink without Herbert Pimloe.”

  “Then run home to Isaac. Because I’ll spank you in the street, Herbert, so help me God.”

  Patrick was in a fix. He couldn’t patrol Jane Street the entire afternoon. He had an appointment uptown. So he left the broom on Odile’s steps to remind every caller that his presence was in the house. He plunged east, to the tall hotels and fashionable dormitories of lower Fifth Avenue. He walked up Fifth in his ruined soccer shirt, swabs of cloth trailing from his back like dirty fingers. People crept away from him, children pointing to the man in the shredded shirt who was too poor to wear shoes.

  St. Patrick had more than the little goya in his head. His meeting with Isaac puzzled him. A First Dep didn’t have to bang shoulders with a retired member of the rubber-gun squad. Did Isaac roll on the ground with him to spit words in Patrick’s ear, words about Jerónimo? Passing Thirty-fourth Street, he paused to shout into the window of a men’s boutique. “That lad’s no faigel. God strike me dead if Jerónimo’s the lipstick freak!”

  Boys came out of the boutique to stare at the big dummy in
rotten clothes. St. Patrick departed from them. He climbed to Fiftieth Street, frowning at the beautiful wallets in a leather store. He preferred simpler goods, wallets that could live with a scratch, shirts that could deteriorate on your body. He was going to visit Odile’s uncle, the Broadway angel Vander Child, and discuss Odile’s future with him. All his proper clothes, shirts and suits from his detective days, had been destroyed with the Bethune Street shul. He wouldn’t borrow a jacket from Hughie. He was Patrick of the Synagogues, apostle of the rough.

  Vander’s doorman smirked at him. Patrick removed a bottle of Guinness from his pants and nudged the cap off with his teeth. He finished the bottle in one long gulp. “You can tell the squire that his nephew Patrick is coming up.”

  The doorman rang Vander and told him about the giant in the hall. “A mean one, sir. Claims he’s a nephew of yours. He swallowed black piss and left his bottle on the floor.” Vander met St. Patrick near the elevator car, shook his hand, and guided him into the apartment.

  Patrick drew his shoulders in. He saw room after room of bone-white furniture, highboys that reached over his forehead, lowboys that were broader than three of him. He turned to uncle Vander and made his plea. But the black ale, the walk uptown, and distress over Jerónimo had impaired his speech. Sentences collected under his tongue and broke from him in great mealy blusters. “… marriage certificate … Zorro … false wedding … wife.…”

  Vander smiled. He’d heard about St. Patrick from his niece. The big dope was plaguing her. He stood outside Odile’s building and chased off customers and friends with a broom. No one could get near Odile except Papa Guzmann’s idiot boys and St. Patrick himself. His devotion was ruining Odile. She couldn’t entertain in her apartment, or undress for a man. She’d become a pauper on account of him.

  “Odile doesn’t want you on Jane Street, Mr. Silver. You’re interfering too much. She’s fond of you, I think, but she isn’t looking for a grandfather. So keep away.”

  Patrick got his tongue back. He seized Vander by his lapels, lifted him up so he could be eyeball to eyeball with him, and said, “I’m nobody’s grandpa, Mr. Child. I’m a lad of forty-two. My father was a vicar, my mother delivered bread, and I’m going to marry your niece.”

  He returned to the Kings of Munster, stood the bar to a round of Guinness, blew his nose, and announced his engagement to the little goya. Her many husbands, Papa, Jorge, Alejandro, Topal, and Jerónimo, welcomed Patrick’s news. “Irish, I can’t speak for Zorro,” Papa said. “But you can have my share of her. The goya is yours.”

  To celebrate, Sammy shoved frozen hamburgers into his automatic oven. “Everybody eats, by God.” Papa stared at this sweating box with absolute scorn. He switched the oven off and threw all the hamburgers away. Then he whispered a shopping list into Topal’s ear. Topal brought some crayons out of the back room, colored his cheeks to disguise himself, and went to the sausage factory on Hudson Street with his father’s list.

  While the Irishmen at the bar had another round of Guinness, Papa made a casserole of sausages and beans. The aroma of spiced pork baking in a dish nearly crippled the Irishmen, who had chewed nothing but flimsy sandwiches and potato chips at the Kings of Munster.

  As keeper of the house Sammy had the right to walk ahead of his customers and dig into the casserole with a large spoon. His sampling of the sausages and beans convinced him that the Kings of Munster shouldn’t let its boarders go. The Irishmen found napkins and plates in the narrow pantry behind the bar and helped themselves to Papa’s casserole. They sat near the Limerick giant sucking up sausages and beans.

  Patrick wouldn’t touch the casserole. He sat on a stool watching Jerónimo play with the Guzmann crayon box. Jerónimo was in the sanctuary. Crouched under the doors of the Babylon closet, he softened crayons with the heat of his thumb. Then he took the crayons over to Jorge’s bed. The baby began to paint his brother’s lips. Jorge smiled with wax on his mouth. The baby was much more deliberate. His face grew taut as he applied the wax. He had a keen artistry, Papa’s oldest boy. He moved from Jorge’s lips to his earlobes and his eyes. There was nothing circumstantial about his work. He could account for the irregularities of a cheekbone or an eyebrow. He drew perfect halos.

  Patrick turned away from spying on the two brothers. He had an ugly revelation: Jerónimo was the lipstick freak. He painted little boys and murdered them. Patrick had always been a lousy detective. Isaac was the wizard, not Patrick Silver of the rubber-gun squad. The Chief could examine any crime scene and weave a history from a book of matches, blood on a corpse’s shoe, movie stubs, phlegm in a handkerchief. But Patrick saw the halos around Jorge’s eyes. He could piece together a history from the flight of a crayon in Jerónimo’s steady fist. The baby’s lines were strong. His elbow never dipped. He judged you with his crayons. He marked you up and took your life away. Jerónimo was the freak.

  Did it start with a game? Jerónimo required a docile creature to exercise his art. One of his brothers, or a dollfaced boy. Up to the roofs, hand in hand. The boy must have liked the wax at first. Then he wouldn’t sit still. Is that what angered Jerónimo? Made him carve the crayoned boy?

  Patrick searched for the weapon Jerónimo used. He found only blunt instruments among the family treasure: ice-cream scoops, plastic whistles, shoelaces made of bone. Where was Jerónimo’s knife? Patrick had to crawl into the sanctuary while the Guzmanns were occupied, and Jorge was asleep. He probed every possible hiding place. He wedged his knuckles into the cracks behind the ark and had a miserable time getting them free. He came up with wads of dust and a dead mouse.

  Patrick stopped marching to Odile’s. He stayed inside the Kings of Munster. He supped black ale with his eyes on Jerónimo and attended to the business of the shul. Rabbi Hughie had placed a collection box on the bar to help the shul entice a cantor for the high holidays. With St. Patrick around, the Irishmen had to reach into their trousers and stuff Hughie’s box with dollar bills. Hughie despaired, even with a fat collection box: what cantor would sing the Kol Nidre at the back of a saloon? The shul would have to hire a renegade, a hazan who had been barred from the synagogues of New York.

  Patrick couldn’t hold the subject of cantors in his head. He was waiting for Jerónimo to jump into the street. The baby wouldn’t move. He had his crayon box, his brothers, white chocolate, halvah, and his father’s casseroles. Stuck in an Irish bar with nothing to do, Papa took up Sammy’s invitation to become the Kings’ principal cook. The bar fell heir to a glut of food. Papa didn’t limit himself to sausages in a black-bean grave. He had his witch doctors bring Marrano powders and spices to Horatio Street. He prepared dishes that no Irishman had ever dreamed of. Hacked chicken and squid in mounds of yellow rice, garnished with pimentos, olives, and sea cucumber; scallops sliced so thin, they shriveled against your tongue; sauces that could make you sneeze; strips of abalone that curled in your mouth like baby fish; and ten varieties of pork.

  Papa’s dishes began to pull in Irishmen from other bars. You couldn’t find an empty stool at the Kings of Munster from four P.M. to midnight, which were Papa’s serving hours. Patrick had to forage through the bar with both elbows out to get his bearings, or the baby would have been lost in the haze of Irishmen. When the crowds became intolerable, he would seek out the crayon box, knowing that Jerónimo couldn’t disappear without his crayons. While the Irishmen gobbled abalone and squid, he would catch the baby staring at him, Jerónimo with a crayon in his mouth, his eyes growing enormous, his ears swelling in the heat, and Patrick having to squint or look down at his stockings.

  One afternoon Patrick was waylaid by a dozen Irishmen who obliged him to Indian-wrestle with them all. Patrick took these Irishmen four at a time. With the last of them leaning against his elbow, he happened to twist his face towards the sanctuary. He blinked at the Guzmann territories in the back room, beds, bundles, and floor space. The crayon box wasn’t there. “Mercy,” Patrick said, flinging Irishmen off his arm. The baby had sneaked out under Pa
trick’s long Irish nose. “Whhere’s thaaat childdd?” Sammy’s customers flew to the ends of the bar when they heard St. Patrick roar.

  Patrick shoved Guinness bottles into his rotting pants, snapped his thighs, and landed on the street. Where would a baby prowl? The old horse barns and factories of Greenwich Street couldn’t do Jerónimo any good. The baby would go down to Perry or Charles, Patrick reasoned. Abingdon Square was too crammed with people and cars to pluck a boy off the sidewalk. Patrick went to the top of Charles Street. There wasn’t a boy around. Perry Street was filled with touring parties of gay lads who scoffed at a ragged, shoeless, white-haired giant.

  Patrick hiked to Bethune Street. Half a block from the scorched shul, he saw Jerónimo walking with a little runt of a boy. The giant followed them on shaky knees. He could find nothing untoward about their walk (Jerónimo didn’t paw the runt, grab at the little boy’s clothes). He prayed to hairy Esau, unfortunate son of Isaac and Rebekah, to uncloud an Irishman’s brain. The runt bothered him. He wore a cap in the summer, a pile coat, and one of his ankles was fatter than the other. Patrick had lived around “fat ankles” for fifteen years; they were a common sight at Police Headquarters. Either the runt suffered from elephantiasis, or he had a holster near his shoe.

  Patrick cursed his own gullibility. The runt was a decoy, sent by Isaac to trap Jerónimo and tease him onto the roofs. Patrick had been hasty to judge Jerónimo. Why couldn’t Papa’s boy walk on Bethune Street? Was it wrong to visit a dead shul? The runt had been put there to seduce Jerónimo. They’d go up to a roof that Isaac had selected in advance. The runt would suck Jerónimo’s cheek, according to a special plan. Then the cops would pounce on the baby, handcuff him, and yell freak, freak!

  But it couldn’t happen if St. Patrick fucked over Isaac the Brave. He tried to warn Jerónimo. Cupping his hands, he shouted into the street. “Jerónimo-o-o-o!” Jerónimo wasn’t headed for the roofs. The runt went into the shul with him. “Jesus,” Patrick said.