Education of Patrick Silver

by Jerome Charyn

  He ran for the shul, the Guinness bottles clinking in his pants. Woozy with beer, the giant had to hold his knees to prevent himself from crashing into the ground. City marshals had thrown up boards around the entrance of the shul. Jerónimo and the runt must have crept under these boards. Patrick couldn’t get in. He ripped his fingers clutching wood. He stepped on long carpenter’s nails, the rust eating into his heel. He invoked the Munster giant, Cruathair O’Carevaun, to give him strength over the boards. Finally he made a hole big enough to crawl through.

  The shul was black as a potato bin. Patrick couldn’t see his nose. He kept to a single spot until his eyes grew accustomed to the dark. There were no stairs to climb. The shul stood like a shaved box. The walls still smelled of fire. St. Patrick trudged through pieces of rubble. “Jerónim-o-o-o!” The rubble began to slide. Somebody said “fuck” and “shit.” It sounded like a girl. Patrick trudged some more. Flicks of coaly brown light came through the leading in the wall where the stained glass used to be. Jerónimo and the runt were rolling next to Patrick’s feet. The runt was a tiny policewoman with cropped hair.

  “Miserable spy,” Patrick said. He picked her off Jerónimo. She struggled in Patrick’s arms, screaming at him with shul dust on her jaw while Jerónimo escaped. She must have lost her handgun in the fracas, because her ankle holster was free.

  “You big son-of-a-bitch,” she said. “Obstructing a police officer. You’ll sit in Riker’s Island for that.”

  Patrick dropped her into the rubble. “A lovely bit of entrapment. Kissing a mad boy in my shul. Pray I don’t report you to Isaac.”

  The lady cop sneered at him. “He tried to kill me, you Irish ape.”

  “With what? His crayons? Or the pebble in his pants?”

  “With this,” she said, thrusting a shiny thing into Patrick’s hand. It was warm against his skin. Patrick squinted in the potato-bin light and recognized the handle of an ice-cream scoop. The giant pricked himself. The toy was sharp at both ends. Jerónimo must have rubbed it against the pipes in Papa’s candy store. Patrick felt a crayon between his toes. He retrieved the crayon box and hobbled out of the shul.

  12.

  A squad of blue-eyed detectives burst into the Kings of Munster with shotguns and a warrant for Jerónimo’s arrest (the runt must have told every commissioner at Headquarters how she wrestled with the lipstick freak in St. Patrick’s synagogue). The detectives shoved Irishmen aside, stuck their fingers in Papa’s casserole, searched behind the bar, leered at Jorge Guzmann, peeked into the Babylon closet, bowed to St. Patrick, and left.

  Papa wouldn’t serve food that had been touched by Isaac’s “angels.” He dumped all his abalone and squid into Sammy’s garbage pail and started to prepare another casserole. He stirred saffron into a pot of rice and seethed at Patrick Silver.

  “You’re my man, aint you, Irish? Why did you let them piss on us?”

  “Moses, it wasn’t the shotguns that bothered me. I know plenty of incantations that would cure a buckshot wound. But you can’t fight a judge’s signature.”

  “True, but you can swallow the paper it’s written on.”

  “Moses, what’s the good? They’d only come again. Where’s Jerónimo?”

  “God knows. He’s running from you and the cops. Did you have to scare him, Irish? He trusted you.”

  “Faith, I pulled a runty female off his back. What more could I do?”

  “You could have taken his hand and brought him to his father. Zorro had you figured right. He said you and Isaac could snarl for ten years and you’d still end up with your thumb in his ass. Isaac owns your guts. Irish, you’re a cop without a badge.”

  “Zorro’s full of crap,” St. Patrick said. He dropped Jerónimo’s “knife” on the bar. “Moses, there’s a toy could scratch anybody’s face. Not the sort of plaything you’d expect from a forty-four-year-old lad.”

  Papa eyed the sharpened stump of metal on Sammy’s counter. “Irish, is that your only evidence? Your uncle at Headquarters steals a fucking ice-cream scoop from Boston Road, breaks it in half, and plants a piece of it on Jerónimo, so a prick like you can buy his story. Didn’t you catch a lady cop with Jerónimo? Isaac trains a little whore to dress like a boy. Jerónimo can read her disguise. She wiggles her ass at him, and they go into the shul that Isaac burned down. Does that make Jerónimo the lipstick freak?”

  “I’m not a Yankee lawyer. I can’t argue the delicacies of right and wrong. But if Isaac’s wonderboys grab the baby’s cuffs, he’ll be limping for a long time. Isaac knows how to smile at a judge. They’ll build a hole for the baby, and you’ll never find him.”

  Papa touched his lip.

  “Moses, I can help you if I get to the baby first. Is he in Manhattan, or the Bronx? Tell me.”

  Papa shrugged and went to his casserole.

  Patrick drifted into the street. The Guinness had begun to boil in his pants. He opened a bottle with his thumb and drank the hot black ale. He got to Abingdon Square with the sun in his eyes. A patrolman in a summer blouse mistook him for a hobo, and dug a billy club into his left wing. “Go on, you scag. Move your shit to the Bowery. Respectable people live around here.”

  Patrick didn’t complain; he allowed the energy in a cop’s stick to push him uptown. He’d have to scrape two boroughs for Jerónimo’s hideaway. The giant was lost. Should he cover the playground on Little West Twelfth Street? Drudge towards Ninth Avenue? Infiltrate the brownstones of Chelsea? His crooked hops carried him to Twenty-third Street. He had no more bottles in his pants. He’d have to duck into an Irish bar and reload himself with Guinness. Should he get off the streets and follow the baby from roof to roof? While he maundered in the gutters, a dusty cab nearly chopped off his knees. The rear door opened. A familiar grunt beckoned to him from the dark interiors of the cab. “Irish, move your ass.”

  Patrick ruffled the shaggy ends of his sleeves and plunged into the cushions. The cab shot away from the cluttered sidewalks of Twenty-third Street. The giant was sitting with Zorro Guzmann, the Fox of Boston Road.

  “Congratulations, Irish.”

  “Zorro, the Guzmanns don’t congratulate without a touch of malice. Where did I offend you now?”

  “Irish, I promise you, it’s heartfelt. Papa says you’re in love with Odile.”

  “Papa says a lot of things.”

  “Take the goya, Irish. Don’t cry. Zorro is giving her to you.”

  “Maybe the goya’s not yours to give.”

  “Why throw insults?” Zorro said, lounging on the cushions. “I own forty percent of her, at least. But who’s stingy? Irish, you took care of my brother. That’s worth forty percent of any goya.”

  “Your father thinks I sold the baby to Isaac.”

  “Don’t misjudge him, Irish. He’d murder half the Bronx for Jerónimo.” Zorro took the baby’s metal toy out of his pocket. “You shouldn’t have showed this to Papa. You hurt his feelings.”

  “Pity,” St. Patrick said. “Papa swears it’s Isaac’s tool, a sinker to drown the baby.”

  “No,” Zorro said. “It belongs to Jerónimo. It stays in his shirt most of the time.”

  The giant leaned closer to Papa’s youngest boy. “Then your father ought to admit who it was that’s been tearing up infants on the roofs.”

  “Irish, you work for us. Remember that. Your job is to protect Jerónimo, not to handcuff him.”

  “Jesus,” Patrick muttered. “What am I supposed to do about the dead little boys? Did you want me to find new bait for Jerónimo? Should I escort him up to the roofs, Señor Zorro?”

  “Irish, we aren’t like the norteamericanos. You have Zorro’s word. My brother won’t go near the roofs again.”

  “I’m grateful for that,” St. Patrick said, watching the swollen, heavy streets from his window. Like his forebear, O’Carevaun the giant, he was in the mood to destroy certain property. If Cruathair could dismantle the harbor at Cork, Patrick would chew up Manhattan, block by block, digesting people, lamppos
ts, dogs, and bricks. He had an ungodly rawness in his throat. Patrick’s thirst was killing him. “I’m parched,” he said, rising out of the cushions. “I’ll vomit blood in half a minute. Stop the car.”

  Zorro had to restrain the giant. “Irish, don’t move. We’re getting out.”

  The cab dropped them on Columbus Avenue, in the West Eighties. Zorro tapped the window, and the cab flew downtown. Patrick couldn’t remember seeing the driver’s face. Could the Fox run a whole fleet of cabs with the twitch of his hand? They went into a Cuban bar on Eighty-ninth Street. Zorro must have known the men in the bar. He rubbed up against these cubanos, saying “hombre, hombre.” The cubanos smiled at him with their gold teeth. But they were suspicious of a giant with a holster in his pants. Patrick could feel this angry mugger of eyes surrounding him. He plopped onto a stool, figuring he would have to drink pale beer with the cubanos. “Cerveza de perro,” Zorro croaked to the barman.

  Patrick’s forehead crumpled at the sight of Guinness on the counter. “Mercy,” he said. The barman had produced two lovely bottles of black ale. St. Patrick took the miracle without a complaint. “God bless.” The bottles were chilled. He warmed them over with his fist (the “fevered” bottles would restore the bitterness that Patrick loved). Then he drank with the Fox.

  “Zorro, who turned these lads onto Guinness?”

  The Fox had brown foam on his lip. “Irish, you’re a pathetic man. Living in a synagogue makes you stupid. How can you see the world with a shawl over your head? There was Guinness in Cuba before an hombre like you could get himself born. The habaneros call it dog’s beer. Fathers give it to their young boys. It puts fur on your chest. Irish, let’s go. I have to find my brother.”

  Patrick plagued him with questions once they arrived on the street.

  “Is Jerónimo in the neighborhood? Are the cubanos hiding him?”

  “Irish, shut up. Coen had an uncle named Sheb. He used to play with Jerónimo. They pissed in the toilet together, they sucked hard-boiled eggs, they took sunbaths outside my father’s candy store. Sheb’s in an old-age home near Riverside park. That’s where we have to look. When my brother gets tired of walking, he’ll run to Sheb.”

  “Coen doesn’t die so easy,” Patrick said. “Blue Eyes is the tit that everybody uses. Me, you, Isaac, Odile, Papa, Jerónimo, and this crazy uncle, all of us fed off Coen’s milk and blood. Now he won’t disappear. You can’t pick your feet without finding pieces of Manfred between your toes.”

  “Hombre, we have work to do. So don’t shit in my ear. Isaac isn’t an ignorant. He knows my brother’s moves. I’ll bet he has five cops sitting with Sheb Coen. I can’t warn Jerónimo. Isaac’s scumbags would kick me into the ground. But you can grab my brother before he gets to the old-age home. Isaac’s afraid of your yarmulke and your black socks. He won’t mess with a synagogue boy.”

  A lamppost away from the Cuban bar, and Patrick was hungry for dog’s beer again. Mentions of Isaac went straight to his throat. He couldn’t even go an Irish mile without lapping on a bottle. Zorro tried to skirt across Broadway. He was worried about the undercover cops who mingled in the crowd of pimps, whores, beggars, cripples, transvestites, widowers, retards, skagheads, snow cone vendors, runaways, pickpockets, and street musicians, and who might recognize the Fox. But the giant squeezed Zorro’s shirt and pulled him into an Irish bar, the Claremorris, on Broadway. Patrick was remembered at the Claremorris; he haunted this bar when he was a lad with the First Dep. He could come uptown and drink his Guinness warm, with or without an egg.

  “Irish, are you crazy? This is a detectives’ bar. You can’t walk two inches without breathing on a cop.”

  “Not to worry,” Patrick said. “You’re safe with me.”

  “What about Jerónimo?”

  “We’ll get to the baby. In a minute. I need some fur on my chest.”

  Patrick saw a few of his old brothers from the Shillelagh Society. First-grade detectives, they snubbed a cop who had fallen into the life of a janitor and went around in stinky clothes. They assumed Zorro was a rat that Silver had dragged out of his burning shul. Who else would have yellow wax on his cheeks? Patrick didn’t give a fig about the frozen attitude of his brothers. He was staring at the holy rump of a girl who danced with four sailors at the back of the Claremorris. Her thighs worked like long, winnowy roots as she plunged from sailor to sailor. Jesus, she had a familiar shape under her narrow skirt. She didn’t have to turn her head and wink. That rump belonged to Marilyn the Wild.

  What was Isaac’s skinny daughter doing in the Claremorris? He couldn’t be wrong. He’d spied her often enough as she strolled the corridors at Headquarters on the arm of her husband, who would change from year to year. Patrick disapproved of these husbands. They always had slick leather boots and a tweezed mustache. Every clerk in Isaac’s office knew that the girl was in love with Manfred Coen. She would deposit the mustache with her father and hang around Coen’s desk. Her father’s cops would feast on Marilyn. A blind man couldn’t have missed her bosoms, and the draw of her Irish bum. Everybody looked until Isaac came out to glare at Blue Eyes and recall Marilyn the Wild. St. Patrick of the Synagogues, the deacon-detective of Bethune Street, had the stiffest prick in New York City on the days that Marilyn showed.

  Patrick would have left her to grind with her sailors, only something was amiss. Marilyn seemed to tire of their company. She had a suitcase under a chair, and the sailors wouldn’t allow her to reach for it. The four of them had her in a jumble of arms, legs, and middy blouses. She couldn’t break out of the sailors’ net. Hands crept up her skirt. The gentlemen at the bar seemed to glorify this multiple courtship of Lady Marilyn. There was much clapping and whistling inside the Claremorris. Such encouragement livened the sailors. Marilyn bounced between their shoulders, her head twisted back, her eyes fixed on the ceiling as four sailors nuzzled her at the same time.

  St. Patrick began to pull gentlemen out of his way. “Watch it, lads, coming through.”

  Zorro hammered on his neck. “Hombre, don’t meddle. They love sailors in here. What’s that skinny broad to you?”

  “She’s a friend of mine,” Patrick said.

  “That’s something else. You take their arms, Irish, and I’ll go for their balls. But make it fast … what’s her name?”

  “Marilyn the Wild.”

  The Fox revealed his teeth. “Hombre, Isaac is out there trying to finish my brother, and you expect me to save his girl? I ought to waltz with those sailors, give them my congratulations.”

  “Fine,” Patrick said. “Then I’ll have to bust your face too. Zorro, don’t blame Marilyn for her daddy’s shit.”

  Patrick held two sailors by the nap of their long, square collars and flung them off Lady Marilyn. Zorro grounded a third sailor, biting him just below the knee. The fourth sailor looked up at mad Patrick and rushed out of the bar. The patrons of the Claremorris were furious at Silver and his little toad. They considered it immoral to bite a sailor’s knee. The detectives of the Shillelagh Society had tiny blackjacks in their pockets that could cuff the ears of janitors and their friends.

  Zorro went into a crouch. He appealed to three of his saints, Moses, Jude, and Simon of the Desert. “Hombre,” he whispered, “don’t fight with your elbows. We’ll never win. Stick your fingers in their eyes.”

  The Shillelaghs advanced towards Patrick. They liked the idea of a donnybrook in the late afternoon. They were crooning now. They began to leer at Marilyn.

  “St. Patrick, do we have permission to dance with your sweetheart?”

  “Are you engaged to the bimbo, Pat?”

  “Be a good boy. Show us how to bless her quim.”

  “Hold your tongues,” Patrick said. “That’s the First Dep’s baby. She’s Isaac’s child.”

  A stink ran through the Claremorris. The Shillelaghs were smelling their own doom. They’d insulted Father Isaac, said filthy things to Marilyn the Wild. They pitied the loss of their livelihoods. “Lady Marilyn,” they sa
id, dusting off her suitcase. “Lady Marilyn.”

  Patrick took the suitcase from his brothers and walked Lady Marilyn out of the Claremorris. She hadn’t forgotten the sullen Irish giant who shared a desk with Manfred Coen. Her father’s cops had dubbed him St. Patrick of the Synagogues because they’d never heard of an Irishman who was so devoted to a shul. Blue Eyes had been fond of the giant. The two of them would sit at their desk eating from a single cup of cottage cheese. Marilyn smiled at St. Patrick. Her ribs were sore from the crush of sailors. She’d stopped at the Claremorris to have a whiskey sour. She felt sorry for one of the sailors and agreed to dance with him (she’d just come home from a sailor’s town, Seattle, where lonely boys drifted through the streets dressed in a white that was so absolute, it wouldn’t grow dirty in the rain). Marilyn didn’t expect dry humps on Broadway; she had to dance with eight knees in her crotch.

  “Patrick,” she said, “you won’t tell my father I’m in Manhattan, will you?”

  “Me and your dad aren’t much for speaking to one another. Do you need a rooming house? You’re welcome to stay with us, if you don’t mind sleeping near a whiskey barrel.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “I’ll find a place. And I’ll visit Isaac when I’m ready for him.”

  She clutched the suitcase, got on her toes to kiss St. Patrick, then stood level to kiss the Fox, and walked into the thick of Broadway, while the snow cone vendors and other hombres commented on this chica with the fine tits, ass, and legs. The giant would have battled every hombre in the neighborhood to protect Lady Marilyn (he admired her rump in a more quiet way), but Zorro rugged on his holster.

  “Irish, this aint the time. Jerónimo’s on the loose.”

  They had to squeeze between Broadway mamas to get down to Riverside Drive. A green gas boiled up from the sewers. Patrick craved the calm, beery mist inside the Kings of Munster.