Blue Eyes

by Jerome Charyn

  “Where’s Jerónimo? Is he bringing him down? Didn’t you see him?”

  “The baby? No.” The Chinaman walked toward San Juan de Letran. “Imbécil. You can’t meet here. The chuetas are crazy. They’re superstitious about blue-eyed people. They’re afraid of blond hair. Don’t worry. It’s been arranged. Jerónimo will come to you.”

  He stationed Coen at the north end of the Alameda. “Wait. I’m going to get the hardware for tonight Smile, Coen. I said the baby will show.”

  At forty, thirty, twenty, fifteen, Jerónimo had been the baby. Papa stuffed spinach sandwiches down his throat, Topal cleaned his fingernails with a safety pin, whoever found him in the street had to tie his shoes. The five other Guzmanns took their turns bathing him; no one could trust him alone in a tub. Yet Jerónimo had an infallible sense of direction, the ability to read red and green lights, the acumen to avoid the harsh yellow paint of the taxicabs, the boldness to clamp money into a busdriver’s fist. He could sing louder than Jorge. He swallowed caramels faster than Topal or Alejandro. He consumed more chocolate than a covey of schoolgirls. He mourned the plucked chickens in butcher windows, his eyes following the hooked line of strangled necks, pitying the lack of feathers more than the loss of life. He had profounder silences than any of the Coens. Among the Guzmanns he had the strongest grip. He loved César best, then his father, then Topal, then Alejandro, then Jorge, then uncle Sheb. He missed the egg store, the blue-white aura of the candling machine, the pea soup of Jessica Coen. He was a manchild fixed in his devotions, his manners, his fears. He wouldn’t step under a ladder but he could kiss the wormiest of dogs. He tore off chunks of halvah for toothless abuelitas (grandmas) and desperate nigger boys, not for young wives. He was kind to squirrels, mean to cats. He would climb fire escapes to mend a pigeon wing. He ignored birds with bloody eyes.

  Coen saw him cross the park from Hidalgo Street, his shoelaces dragging, his trousers filled with candy, his forehead pocked from bewilderment; he hadn’t spotted Coen. The marks deepened on his face as he searched the park. He pulled an ear out of frustration. Coen shouted, “Jerónimo, Jerónimo.” And Jerónimo went fat around his eyes. The webs disappeared. He ran to Coen, his fists slapping air. Coen tied Jerónimo’s shoes. Then they embraced, Jerónimo squeezing Coen’s ribs with an elbow. He had thick gray sideburns. The hairs in his nose were also gray. On his knuckles the color was Guzmann black. He wiped spit before he could talk. He mumbled Coen’s first name, saying “Manfro.” He seized Coen by the hand and took him out of the park. But he wouldn’t let Coen cross over until the traffic light switched to “Pase.” Then he led Coen straight to an ice cream parlor in a huge drugstore on Madero. He ordered hot tea for himself and a chocolate sundae for Coen. He crumbled halvah into the tea and softened his father’s caramels with a heavy thumb (the baby had incredible fingers). The ice cream tasted like cheese. On tall stools with their thighs in a confidential position, Coen meant to pump the baby about Mordeckay, César, and the Mexican Marranos, and the trip from Boston Road to Belisario Dominquez via Manhattan. But he couldn’t use his guile on Jerónimo, so he resigned himself to the sour chocolate in his sundae cup.

  Walking with the baby up Madero, Coen sensed the incongruity of a Bronx boy in Mexico. His hand in Jerónimo’s three-fingered grip, both of them with their eyes down, watching for puddles and cracks in the sidewalk, they could just as well have been on Boston Road. The baby turned left at the Zócalo, the main old square, and brought Coen into a district of bazaars. Jackets belonging to the house of Juan el Rojo hung inches from Coen’s head. Salons de belleza (beauty parlors) and radio schools coexisted in the street. Stalls hugged the Avenida 5 de Febrero from end to end. Jerónimo and Coen stopped at a pastelería, where they collected a pair of metal pinchers and began loading cakes, buns, and rolls on a tray. Jerónimo operated the pinchers with his tongue out. Emulating the other patrons, Coen gripped an enormous wood shaker with a rounded head and sprinkled a polite amount of confectioner’s sugar on Jerónimo’s cakes but Jerónimo wanted more. So Coen dunned the rolls. He payed under five pesos (the equivalent of thirty-nine cents) for the sixteen pieces on the tray. They popped rolls into their mouths, ending up swollen-cheeked at the Zócalo, each with a moustache of sugar. Finally Coen said, “César worries about you, Jerónimo. Do you have enough? Are you close with Mordeckay?”

  The baby flicked sugar off his lip.

  “Jerónimo, what should I tell César?”

  Jerónimo kissed Coen above the eyes and led him to the borders of the Alameda.

  “Baby, should César come and get you?”

  Coen tried to go above the park with Jerónimo, but the baby held his wrist and prevented him. “House,” he said, pointing beyond Madero Street. He walked away from Coen with the remains of the rolls in a stringed-up bag the woman at the pastelería had given him. He didn’t wave. He didn’t smile to Coen. He was absorbed in traffic signals. Crouching in the direction of San Juan de Letran, he picked at seams in the gutter with a shoe. Coen watched his crooked strides, thinking Jerónimo could make his Boston Road on Hidalgo Street. The halvah was a simple gratuity. The baby survived without the candy store.

  Coen berated himself inside the lobby of the Hotel Zagala. He had forgotten to check Jerónimo’s fly. He was so gloomy in the elevator, the mozo had to remind him of his own floor. He had no news for César. The baby was privy to secrets that Coen would never discover. He couldn’t get between Jerónimo and Mordeckay; the Guzmanns were a close-mouthed people, sly, with vast, puckered foreheads and a reticence that was centuries old. They had played dumb in Lima, Peru, putting on the official uniform of beggar mutes to snatch a money pouch or burgle the summer homes of the ricos. Before that they mumbled Christianlike prayers in Holland, Portugal, and Spain, the quality of their voices depending on the season, the climate, and the local affinity for Marranos and other converts. Only Papa loved to talk, but he gave away nothing of himself in his blistered stories about raising five “pretzels” in America.

  The Chinaman found Coen slouching on the bed. He opened his traveling bag and dumped out two 9mm. automatics with long, oily noses, two leather truncheons, a variety of badges, and a box of shells. Pleased with his loot, he walked around Coen with his knuckles in his sides. Coen wouldn’t look at the badges or the guns.

  “Why didn’t Mordeckay come with Jerónimo? Can’t he sit in the Alameda? Drink tea at a counter? Is he frightened of American cops? I wanted to talk to him about the boy.”

  Chino dismissed Coen’s bile with a flip of his hand. “The chuetas never leave their homes. Mordeckay is married to his porch. I promise, he couldn’t tell you where the Zócalo is. No pigeater sits in the park. Who would watch the pork on their stove? Don’t be scared for the baby. He has his address pinned to his shirt. He can’t get lost.”

  “Somebody ought to tell César about Jerónimo’s solo walks. I thought the boy is supposed to be in hiding.”

  “Hombre, you can’t tell Zorro what Zorro already knows.” He herded the badges into Coen’s lap. “We have other business here. I didn’t come to mind the baby. Which one do you want? The Texas street cleaner’s badge? The fireman’s star? The hospital attendant? That’s the shiny one. The park ranger? It doesn’t matter. Just so it’s in English. The cholos can’t read. Imbécil, will you choose?”

  “The fireman,” Coen said.

  Now Chino could ignore him and attend to his own needs. He hefted both automatics, closed an eye over each barrel, and proceeded to fill the magazines. Coen saw the bullets pass between the Chinaman’s fingers. With the hump of his palm Chino fed the loaded magazines into the hollow butts. Then he swabbed his ears with a damp cloth, changed his undershirt, and rubbed scented oil into his collarbone and his neck. Coen had met take-off artists in perfumed vests and tapered calfskin, but he hadn’t expected the Chinaman to prepare himself so fine for an ordinary piece of work. The Chinaman wore a garter on his calf for one of the truncheons. He gave a similar garter and the other tru
ncheon to Coen, who tried them on more out of amusement than anything else. But he wouldn’t accept a gun.

  “Blue-eyes,” Chino said, “you’re going to walk into these gorillas, steal their wife, without a stick?”

  Coen said yes. Then he quizzed the Chinaman. “Wife, what kind of wife? Chino, did they buy the girl off César? Does he doctor up marriage certificates in Mexican? Did you bring the girl here?”

  “Come on,” Chino said, and he stuck both automatics into his belt. Buttoning his wrinkleproof jacket at the bottom, he walked without any bulge. Coen followed him into a sidewalk cafeteria on Juarez. The bulb in the window twitched out “Productos Idish” in bright green. The Chinaman ordered a bowl of sour pickles and hot pastrami on a plate. Coen had chicken soup.

  “Not bad, eh Polish? They fly in the salamis from Chicago.”

  “Who told you?”

  “Zorro.”

  “Christ,” Coen said. “César eats here too? Nobody but César orders pickles out of a bowl.”

  “Schmuck,” the Chinaman said. “I can’t learn? Shut up about César. You’re messing with my appetite.”

  They took a two-peso cab at the Reforma, riding with a party of Mexicans in shortsleeved shirts. “Bueno’ noches,” Chino said, beguiling the Mexicans who were anxious to hear a Chinaman talking Spanish like a capitalino. “Noches,” they said. Sitting four in a row at the back of the cab, with their knees in a huddle, none of them noticed the gun butts under Chino’s pockets or felt the truncheon at his calf. A flurry of introductions carried from seat to seat. “Hermano Reyes,” Chino said, using his Christian name for the Mexicans. He glowered at Coen, pinching him along the heel for being silent so long. “Noches,” Coen said. Chino introduced him as “un gran hombre,” Detective Manfredo Coen. The Mexicans blinked with respect when they discovered that Coen was a homicide man from New York. They wanted to know more about the Chinaman. He told them he was a merchant, a trader in horse meat and other perishables, and a specialist in the operation and maintenance of taxicabs. From the tight look on their faces and their attention to the Chinaman they must have considered horse meat and taxi-cabs more interesting than homicides. At the Mississippi circle they shook Coen’s hand and assured the Chinaman that their city was su casa (his house). The Chinaman wanted some sucking candy before he would go for the girl. So they followed the boulevard to a hippopotamus drugstore made of tiles and glass. Coen saw a horde of blondish girls and boys in bleached outfits gabbing at one of the counters. He couldn’t place their voices, their accents, or their stiff rumps. With their trunklines unbroken and their fingers in their pockets, they seemed to be posing in the drugstore. Coen didn’t mention them until the Chinaman decided on his sour balls. Then he whispered, “Who are they? Pale freaks?”

  “Kids from the American colony,” Chino said.

  “Can’t they bend? Don’t they have a waist?”

  “Ah, don’t worry for them. They’re out of it. The gringo babies. They live off the covers of the record albums. They take technicolor shits. They drink with a straw. Like Jerónimo. They’re worse than the pigeaters. At least Mordeckay sits at home.” Then he softened to them. “Polish, it’s not their fault. They didn’t send their papas into Mexico. How you think I looked when my papa brought me to New York? I wore earlaps summer and winter. I put sugar on the corned beef. I lost my hat in the toilet bowl. Don’t sit on my hand, Polish. Come on. The cholos might not like the time we picked to steal their little gringa.”

  He led Coen up Mississippi Street and across the three tiers of Melchor Ocampo to an apartment house in pink stucco on Darwin Street off Shakespeare. It was hard for Coen to associate grubby hoods and a shanghaied girl with the striped awnings over the windows and the gold knockers on the main door. They rode a tiny elevator with an inlaid ceiling and hammered walls up to the fifth floor. Coen kept scratching his knuckles but the Chinaman didn’t fidget once. He lifted the tails of his jacket to air his pistol butts. He stepped onto the landing, opened a door, and walked in without announcing himself. There were four Mexicans in the sitting room. All of them had on ties and laundered white shirts. They wouldn’t budge for the Chinaman. Coen figured they were brothers because they each had a chubby face with an irregular eyeline that gave them a permanent scowl; only one of them wore a moustache. They cursed the Chinaman, using his pet name. They also mentioned the Guzmanns and Zorro. They sneered at the Chinaman’s automatics and they showed him some kind of receipt.

  The Chinaman turned to Coen, who was still in the doorway. “Polish, they say the little gringa’s their wife. And they have papers to prove it. Imagine, a legal shack job, split four ways.” He shoved Coen into the sitting room. The Mexicans backed off. “El Polonés,” they whispered, pointing to Coen. They looked away from his eyes. “El Polonés.” They grabbed their belongings and flitted past Coen, crowding into the fancy elevator.

  “What the fuck?” Coen said.

  “Polish, you made your rep. Mexico’s yours. They won’t be home for a week.” He cracked a sour ball and stuck the pieces under his tongue.

  Coen began to fume. “You scumbag Chinaman, did you run around the city in the afternoon planting stories about me? Have you been dropping kites all over the place? Am I supposed to be Zorro’s new pistol? A special hand at strangle jobs. Do I blow people’s mouths away?”

  A girl came out of the bedroom in a prim olive robe. She had crust in her eyes from sleeping too hard. “Where’s Miguel? Were’s Jacobo the Red?”

  The Chinaman shrugged off the names. “Can’t tell you, sweetheart. They left in a big hurry. Jacobo, he said, ‘take care of my wife.’”

  Still drowsy, the girl stubbed her toes against the Mexicans’ fat-legged couch. She hopped near the Chinaman, holding one foot, trying not to fall on Coen. The hopping must have ended her sleepiness. She hissed for a while when she discovered a badge on Coen. “You’re the dude who works for my father. Odette warned me about you. The Yid cop who goes down for millionaires.” Then she inspected the badge and saw Coen was wearing an Acapulco fireman’s star. She ignored him and laughed in the Chinaman’s face. She had to sit on the floor to control the heaves in her belly. The Chinaman enjoyed how her calves could swell.

  Coen squatted over her, hands on his kneecaps. “Carrie,” he said. “Caroline. Please get up.” The Chinaman thought Coen shouldn’t placate her so much. He would have taken her by the hair and shown her his worth. He didn’t value rich little gringas, the ones that spit at you and ran behind their papa’s knees. But he had to mind himself. He couldn’t offend Señor Blue-eyes.

  “Don’t be fooled by the star on his shirt, Miss Child. He’s the legitimate article. Detective Coen. Me and him, we can’t stand to see you living with cholos.”

  Caroline took off her four wedding bands and hurled two at the Chinaman and two at Coen. “I’m not going anywhere with you. Where’s Miguel?”

  Careful of Coen, he lifted her by the elbows and walked her toward the bedroom. She was crying now. “Where’s Miguel?”

  “Chino,” Coen said. “What are you doing?”

  “Let me talk to her, Polish. In there. I’ll convince her. Soft, soft.”

  Coen listened through the bedroom door. He heard her say, “Daddy has all the clunks.” She came out with Chino in a simple cotton dress, a seventeen-year-old with plain hands and a bony face, no more the mistress-wife of Darwin Street. Coen pitied her and loathed his own part in playing the shepherd for her father. The Chinaman tried to amuse him. “Polish, she didn’t change clothes before I shut my eyes.” He held her arms for Coen. “Look at those marks. The cholos put her on horse.”

  “He’s crazy,” Caroline said. “They’re allergy shots. Miguel paid for them. My nose would run without injections.”

  “Horse,” the Chinaman said.

  They sneaked her past the concierge at the hotel. Coen paced the bathroom. “How do we get her out? She needs a tourist card, something to prove she’s a citizen.”

  The Chinaman smi
led. “Don’t worry. Zorro fixed it.” He removed wrinkled papers from his wallet, tourist card and birth certificate in the name of Inez Silverstein, Mordeckay’s North American niece.

  Caroline slept on Coen’s bed. Coen sat beside her. “Carrie,” he whispered, “who brought you to Darwin Street?”

  The Chinaman scolded him. “Jesus, you’ll wake her.” He prepared bunks for him and Coen under the footboards of the two beds. Coen undressed in the bathroom. The Chinaman mumbled “Noches” and immediately began to snore. Coen went to bed in his underpants.

  Caroline preferred the Chinaman’s even snores to Coen’s thick breathing. She wished she could be with Jacobo the Red. Jacobo wouldn’t hide under a hotel mattress with his toes sticking out. If she had the choice, she would have taken the Chinaman into her bed. Coen’s ears were too sharp. They had the fix of a bloodhound. And she disliked cops in pointy shoes. The Chinaman had cuter eyes; he didn’t represent her father, like Coen. She owed a certain allegiance to the Chinaman; he brought her into Mexico, together with that gray-haired boy, an imbecile who had erections on the plane. The Chinaman introduced her to Jacobo, Chepe, Dieguito, and Miguel, borrowed the wedding bands off an old Jew in another barrio, a certain Mordeckay, and now he was conspiring to take her back. This cop had some power over him, probably.

  Caroline wasn’t a spoiled girl. The Carbonderry School hadn’t made her cross, like Odile. She held few illusions about her worth as a seductress. Jacobo had gotten her for free; in deference to his cousins, he was sharing her. This arrangement satisfied Caroline. She hated her father’s devotion to high art, his smug promoter’s life, his superiority to anything natively American, his Pinter festivals, his Beckett weeks, his Artaud happenings (little events where benches would be destroyed, girls in the audience would lose pieces of blouse, though never Caroline), his English teas, his croissants, the rococo games in his ping-pong room, none of which Caroline was permitted to join. Bereft of her father’s pleasures, Caroline paid cousin Odile three hundred dollars, saved from an allowance of thirty a month, to smuggle her out of the country. She might yet have stuck with her daddy if he had been able to look her in the face. Vander was a collector of beauties; he surrounded himself with Odile and the hypersensitive creatures of his Bernard Shaw revivals (girls with flawed noses and fabulous chins). Recognizing her own plainness, Caroline had to show daddy Vander that a man could desire her, even if it was only Jacobo the Red.