Blue Eyes

by Jerome Charyn

  Ink dribbled on his uncle’s trousers, so Coen decided to speak. “Are you writing to Albert, uncle Sheb?”

  Sheb took him in with an amazing scorn.

  “Albert’s been dead thirteen years. Would I write to Albert? Tell me something. What’s in your hand?”

  “Sweets, uncle. From Broadway.”

  Sheb investigated the bags. He sniffed burnt almonds, chewed a dried apricot, broke sesame sticks in half. And he bawled Coen out for buying so much. “Manfred, you expecting to shush me with a pound of sesames? Feel it. Isn’t it a whole pound?” Coen wondered why his uncle always attacked during his periods of lucidity. “Can’t fool me. You blame Sheb. Otherwise you would have come with fewer bags.”

  “Blame you, uncle? For what?”

  Sheb coughed over the sesame sticks. “Why not half a pound? That’s a reasonable number. You won’t get sick on half a pound. Manfred, did you ever see a belly blow up?” He winked. “Candy has a lot of gas. You’re a goner if it travels to your brain. Your ears turn blue.” He was crying again. “Your father, God bless him, had big eggs. I wore his pants too. They were tight around the crotch, same as these. Do you hear from Jerónimo?”

  “He’s with the Guzmanns, uncle. I’ve been slack about the Bronx. I couldn’t find my way on Boston Road.”

  Jerónimo was César’s oldest brother, a boy of forty-three. He roasted marshmallows in the Guzmanns’ candy store and created shortages of chocolate syrup. He was thrown out of the first grade thirty-seven years ago because of the prodigious erections he had at the age of six. Jerónimo didn’t miss school. He stuck to the candy store or watched Sheb Coen drink bloody eggs.

  “Jerónimo’s here,” Sheb said.

  “Jerónimo on Riverside Drive? Uncle, he couldn’t tell the streets.”

  “He visited me last month. We finished three bars of chocolate.”

  “Was he with César?”

  “He came alone.”

  “Where’s Jerónimo staying? Did he mention César’s apartment? Uncle, it’s important.”

  “He didn’t say. How can you talk with a mouth full of chocolate?”

  “Uncle, come. The room’s getting dark.”

  Sheb wouldn’t allow Coen to mingle in any of the areas reserved for widows and bachelor women. He was tired of intrigues. He had appropriated his years at Manhattan Rest strictly for contemplation. “Manfred, you wouldn’t believe the fucking that goes on inside this place. Only the married couples have it bad.” They sat in the common room, Sheb offering nurses’ aides, bachelors, charwomen, and cuckolded husbands the opportunity to eat from his bags. He liked to show Coen off to each of his confreres. “The nephew’s with the Manhattan bulls. He carries a gun on him could kiss you in your tonsils. I’m only his uncle. No more Coens. My big brother Albert decided fifty years was long enough. He went into the chicken coop with his wife. It was too cold for them on the outside. Jessica, she had delicate skin.”

  Without warning Sheb pushed down his lip, and he and Coen fell into their old posture of muteness, licking apricots for an hour. A group of widows peeked into the common room, admired the stolid look of the two Coens, and walked out convinced that Sheb was the handsomer one. Sheb finished the last apricot and smiled. There was nothing abrasive about these silences. It was the way of the Coens. Albert and Sheb sat in an egg store thirty years grunting a few words every day. Even the worst cuckold at Manhattan Rest could appreciate the current that passed through Sheb and Coen. They galvanized half the population in the common room before Coen left.

  Coming down Columbus Coen thought a man with red hair might be following him. He stalled in the window of a drugstore reading a display about the circulation of the blood. A machine at the bottom spit purple water into the kidneys, heart, and brain along a system of branched tubes. Coen’s man went into a Cuban coffee shop. Coen watched the tubes. His telephone was ringing when he got home. He could hear the disaffection in Isobel’s voice. Coen had neglected the portorriqueña from the stationhouse doing Pimloe’s chores. She didn’t scold. She had a message from Spanish Arnold. Arnold tripped and lost his orthopedic shoe.

  “Did they take him to Roosevelt, Isobel?”

  “Arnold hates hospitals. He’s in his room.”

  “Who swiped Arnold’s shoe?”

  “Chino Reyes.”

  Coen remembered his man from Columbus, high cheeks under a red mop. He called himself prick, prick, prick, prick, prick. The israelita’s going crazy, Isobel decided, and she hung up on Coen.

  Isobel had to keep the desk lieutenant from crawling up her skirt. “The captain wants his milk,” she said. But she didn’t go upstairs. She would have been waylaid by the homicide squad. Isobel still had sores on her elbows from scraping Detective Brown’s lockerroom bench. And DeFalco had ripped her mesh pants after coming off his late tour. So she sneaked behind the lieutenant without signing the attendance sheet, she smiled at the security man, motioned to one of her girlfriends typing near the musterroom, and took an early lunch break. She missed the israelita. Brown and DeFalco were rough with her. The israelita had soft hands. And he knew how hard to bite into a nipple. She was having less fun at the stationhouse without Coen. She was tired of being scratched by house bulls. She didn’t care for the whiskers on Brown. Flirting with a Puerto Rican cabby (Isobel didn’t encourage his leers or the clicks he made with his tongue), she was on Coen’s stoop in under nine minutes.

  She caught the israelita in his coat. He was leaving for Arnold’s hotel. She wished the Spic had been able to hold on to his shoe. Coen hesitated removing his coat but he welcomed her in.

  “Isobel, they’ve been running me uptown and downtown,” he said. She liked the nasal touches to his voice. DeFalco couldn’t speak without forming bubbles on his lip. And Brown had his orgasms too close to her ear; his growls could make you deaf.

  “I’m not complaining, Manfred. You want to see Arnold? I can visit another time.”

  But they were on Coen’s day bed beginning to thrash although Coen didn’t leave spit on her arm like DeFalco or scar her buttocks with a yellow toenail like Brown. He wasn’t a hungry man. He didn’t own a Long Island wife, come to Isobel straight from his marriage bed. He had no baby pictures and candid shots of a lawn or a family sofa to hurt her with, remind her that she was only a portorriqueña, an auxiliary at the mercy of the bulls. And he wouldn’t single out her sexual parts, inventing praises about the folds of skin on her clitoris until she felt like a police lady with kinky genitals. The israelita didn’t pry. He never peeked at her from the corners of the day bed. He eased her into nakedness, accepting the holes in her underpants and the milky stains on her strapless cocktail bra. But she couldn’t get below the nicks in his eyebrows. The israelita told her nothing about himself (she learned from Brown and the Spic that he lost his wife to a tooth doctor and had been orphaned at the age of twenty-three). She wanted to reassure him, tell him her own losses, a husband who raped her sister and rode cross-country to the Great Salt Lake, a father who died of tuberculosis, a brother who chased a pigeon too far and fell off a Brooklyn roof, but she could sense the israelita had Arnold in his head, and she would prevent him from concentrating on the boot. So she stayed quiet and did nothing but remind him of the hour.

  “Manfred, you don’t have to run the tub. I’m on call at one o’clock.”

  But he made her soak. She hadn’t met another cop who could be so gentle in a tub of water. He washed her breasts without measuring them or reading her beauty marks. He wasn’t squeamish about the sweat under her arm. He didn’t count the creases in her belly (Isobel attributed these to the abortions she’d undergone). She was late, and she had to shake her hair on Coen’s rug and fit the bra over wet skin. Coen tried to dissuade her.

  “Isobel, the captain’s man will wait. He’s got all afternoon to collect his Coke bottles.”

  “Manfred, you live upstairs in the squadroom. You solve your mysteries. You come and go. You don’t appreciate the boys in uniform. Th
ey’ll piss inside my bloomers if I’m not there to nurse their precious switchboard and fetch coffee for them.”

  “I wore the bag once, Isobel. At the academy. Grays instead of blues. I wouldn’t mind giving up my detective shield. I can survive in a bag.”

  Rushing, she could no longer argue. She flattered him instead. “You’re cuter in pinstripe.” But she would have liked this one, this israelita, even in a blue bag. She kissed him on the side of his mouth, her tongue behind clamped lips (she couldn’t have left otherwise), and searched for a cab in the street. A hand pushed her toward the sidewalk but didn’t allow her to fall. She saw pits of black through a red wig. The Chinaman was grateful to Isobel. She had fed him water and Arrowroots in the detention cage when Coen brought him into the house to be fingerprinted. He wouldn’t assault a portorriqueña on Columbus Avenue; he meant only to remind Isobel of his obligation to her. He was holding a shopping bag in his other hand.

  “Is that where you keep Arnold’s boot?” she said.

  The Chinaman showed his teeth. “What’s the matter? Doesn’t Blue-eyes take a shopping bag to work?”

  “Chino, are you following Manfred?”

  “Never,” the Chinaman said. “The cop didn’t buy this avenue. I’m hunting for bargains.”

  “What kind of bargains?” Isobel asked.

  “All kinds.”

  “Chino, give me the shoe. I won’t tell Manfred where I got it. I’ll say it was in the sewer.”

  “The Spic has to suffer,” he said, holding the shopping bag out of reach. He put Isobel in a cab.

  “Make him fast, Isobel. Blue-eyes is going to have a short life.”

  The Chinaman took no pleasure in Isobel’s puffy eyes; he had misjudged the extent of her loyalty to Coen.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m the Blue-eyes’ angel. With me in Manhattan what harm can come?”

  Isobel arrived at the stationhouse while the foot patrolmen were turning out. Some of them marched with night sticks between their legs, aimed at Isobel’s groin. “Coen’s lady,” they said. “The bride of Shotgun Coen.” And they poured out of the house, bumping Isobel along until she broke free of their crush. The captain’s man, who was minding the switchboard in Isobel’s absence, laughed so hard he forgot to scold her. He couldn’t complete his afternoon’s assignments with Isobel away from the board. He had to locate a particular brand of cigars for the captain’s brother-in-law, and chauffeur the lieutenant’s wife to a beauty parlor in Queens. Isobel didn’t object so much to his wandering thumbs. The captain’s man was too preoccupied with his chores to dig very hard. And Isobel was thinking of Coen.

  5 Coen had to sing his name twice before Arnold would allow him in. Arnold hobbled over to his couch. He lived in a hotel on Columbus Avenue for single-room occupants, or SROs. He kept a cocoa tin on the radiator with all his kitchen supplies. Outside his window was a dish for American cheese. He had blue scrapes on both sides of his nose. He was holding a Japanese sword.

  “I’ll kill the Chinaman, he visits me. I’ll teach him fan-tan. I’ll write a checkerboard on his stomach.”

  “Arnold, what happened?”

  Arnold hit his crooked foot with the blunt edge of the sword. “He jumped me, Manfred. On Amsterdam. The cholo put a shopping bag between my legs. He stole my big shoe.”

  “Was he wearing a red mop?”

  “I can’t tell. He moved too fast.”

  “Are you sure it was Chino?”

  Arnold made a bitter face. “I know the Chinaman’s style. You can’t hock a shoe. Only a cholo would think to grab it off a cripple. He talked to me, Manfred. He said regards to Baby Blue-eyes.”

  “I’ll handle him, Arnold. You rest.”

  Coen sat on the couch. Arnold watched him fidget. His patrón was being polite, respecting Arnold’s sores. So Arnold unburdened him. “Manfred, tell me what you need?”

  “Nothing,” Coen said.

  Arnold wanted to catch him before Coen went utterly quiet. “What can I buy for you? Manfred, play fair.”

  Coen bent his head. “A white pimp named Elmo, Elmo the Great. He trails little girls. Where can I find him?”

  “Lend me a dollar.” Arnold launched himself using the sword as a crutch. The sword left nips in his rug. He went to a prostitute next door. The pros worked the garment area and most of the West Side. She was beholden to Arnold. Before the squad commander flopped him, Arnold provided little amenities for her at the stationhouse whenever the plainclothesmen from Coen’s district came down on the girls. Through Arnold Coen could connect with any whore at the hotel. He listened for sword clunks in the hall. Arnold gave the dollar back to Coen.

  “Betty says Times Square. She won’t take money from you. This Elmo parks outside the Port Authority. He’s a tough customer. The nigger pimps give him plenty of space. He clips country girls right off the bus. You know, runaways up from the South. Black and white, eleven and over. Manfred, he won’t scare.”

  “He’ll scare,” Coen said, getting off the couch. Arnold tilted the sword, pursuing Coen.

  “I’m going with you. Manfred, you won’t be able to flake him without me.”

  “I’ll flake him. Did Betty say anything about his car? Is it a tan Imperial?”

  “She says Apollo. Buick Apollo in some muddy color.”

  Coen pulled on his chin, a habit he picked up from his father, who would go for days without selling an egg. “I can’t even make the pimp’s car.”

  “Manfred, what do you want with such a geek?”

  “I’m doing favors for the police department.”

  Coen stepped over Swiss-Up bottles in the hall. A few SROs whispered to him from their rooms. “Hey man, what’s happening?” They didn’t need Spanish Arnold to tell them about Coen. They knew him from Schiller’s ping-pong club, which was located in the basement of the hotel. When they grew tired of staring at walls and drinking rotten wine off their windowsills, they went down to Schiller’s, where they could convene on a bench and watch ping-pong balls fly under soft lights. They were particularly fond of the hours. Schiller’s never closed. Schiller, a bearded gnome who lived in a tiny parlor behind his tables, scorned his fancier customers to sit with the SROs. He shared his pumpernickel bread. He baked vegetable pies for them. But he was a man of variable moods. And if the SROs hogged him too much or threw lumps of bread at the players, Schiller cleared the bench. Usually it took a week before the SROs forgave Schiller enough to sniff horseradish with him and eat his pumpernickel. They also hated the Spic. Schiller wouldn’t chase Arnold out along with them. Arnold had the chair opposite the table reserved for Coen. They felt beneath him because of the handcuffs Arnold owned and because of Arnold’s proximity to the Manhattan bulls. So they belched out Arnold’s secrets. They mimicked his walk. The foot comes from inbreeding, they said. A father fucks his daughter, and Arnold arrives with stuck-together toes. How else do you find a mama who’s only twelve years older than her boy? It was common knowledge that Arnold’s father was a grave-digger in San Juan. The Spic, they liked to say, came from Rico with his sister-mother-aunt at five to help her career as a prostituta in nigger Harlem. The little scumbag painted his bad toes in Easter-egg colors and limped through Harlem bagging Johns for his mother. He had to be a mutt, no? Only a reject would suck up to a blue-eyed Yid.

  Coen was tempted to stop off at the club (Schiller kept Coen’s bat, sneakers, towel, and trunks in a closet filled with shoes). If he entered Schiller’s he would spend the afternoon slapping balls and there would be little energy or enthusiasm left for the Port Authority pimps. So he flattened the crease in his trousers and hiked to Times Square. Coen was one of the last detectives in New York who didn’t have a car. Occasionally he borrowed a green Ford from the homicide pool and chauffeured himself around the precincts. But he preferred the subways or his own feet. Sitting behind the wheel he would recall his father’s eggs, Jerónimo, his wife’s two girls, and his attention would drift away from the road. The bulls from his sq
uad thought Coen had a secret driver, someone from the First Dep’s office to take him around, which convinced them all the more that Coen was a rat and a shoofly for the chiefs.

  He took Ninth Avenue down. He sucked an orange on Forty-seventh Street. He browsed in the spice markets. He bought a Greek doughnut, pleased with his choice of Ninth Avenue over Eighth. The sidewalk porno shows, the fake leather shops, the night club barkers in fedoras and duck suits would only depress him. Coen, who had seen murdered babies at the morgue and smelled crispened bodies after a fire, went from the academy to the First Dep, from the First Dep to homicide, without having to raid a pornographer’s shop. He circled the Port Authority building, noticed black pimps in Buicks and Cadillacs on the opposite streets. They waved to him as he poked his head, shooting their power windows up and down, so Coen couldn’t peek at their faces. The pimps were alone. No country girls with torn satchels were in the neighborhood. Coen stepped into a beige Sedan de Ville squatting between two taxicabs on the Ninth Avenue side of the terminal. He couldn’t find any other white pimp. “Elmo Baskins?”

  Elmo wouldn’t give him sitting room, and Coen had to lean against the window. He was polishing the vamps on his platform shoes with a dry finger when Coen arrived. He wore pinkie rings and wrist straps studded with glass. “Who wants me?”

  On a hunch Coen said, “Vander Child.”

  Elmo laughed into his wrist straps. “Child’s gun? You’ll rip my belly off with stuff like that. You must be Coen, the little cop who owns Manhattan.”

  Coen slumped down and tried to intimidate the pimp. “You can speak to me, Elmo, or you can cry to the DA. Stealing girls out of private schools isn’t going to increase your popularity.” He plucked three of his fingers. “That’s sodomy, rape, carrying minors over the state line. Nobody loves a kidnapper.”

  Elmo wasn’t buying the bluff. “Here, man, I’ll help you make the collar. I’ll drive you. Take me in.”