The baby left first. He picked his way through bundles of newspapers on the stairs, testing for solid ground with one shoe, keeping the other shoe flat. The janitor misinterpreted the off rhythms of Jerónimo’s moves, thinking a harebrained cripple lived on the second floor. Jerónimo rejected the musty odors of the janitor’s hall for the more natural stinks outside. His skin pinkened in the street. He had a dark blush around the eyes, the color spreading into a definite blotch behind the ears. Half a block from the steerer’s place his knees began to pump higher than his belt. His earmuffs climbed with every step. The citizens of Ninetieth Street weren’t accustomed to such stupendous walking. The baby could avoid tricycles and wagonettes without shifting a heel. His head maintained a regular line. Roughened alley cats, some with scars in their whiskers, dropped chicken wings and ran from the baby’s staggered sounds. He was over Broadway and on the stoops of Manhattan Rest in under three minutes. The nurses made allowances for him. They knew he was the gray-haired boy who visited Sheb Coen. Jerónimo laid the two sticky dollars and a clutch of toilet paper in the elbow of Shebby’s pajamas. They kissed in front of neighbors (men and women from a lower floor), the blotch disappearing from Jerónimo’s neck. The neighbors didn’t take Shebby to task for kissing in a public dorm. None of them was fooled by the bushy gray hair, or Jerónimo’s chubbiness in the peacoat. He had all the marks of a Guzmann; tight cheeks, knobs in the forehead, deep sockets for the eyes, lips that curved into a fork under the jaw. Shebby’s neighbors wanted to undress the boy. They pulled at his sleeves, tried to get under the muffs. Shebby howled in his bed. “You bitches, let go. That’s all-weather clothes he’s wearing. I’ll mangle you, you play with his ears. Jerónimo, he’s like a sister to me, better than any nephew or brother boy. Brings me dollars and no unkind news.”
Sheb had to throw bookends and medicine bottles before his neighbors would desist. Jerónimo remained with one earmuff over his mouth, and his sleeves puffing like elephant trunks near the floor. Sheb fixed the baby, bundling him with clawed hands. The neighbors scattered elsewhere, and now Sheb had his own dorm mates to reckon with. “Bitches, make room for the boy.”
Without prologues or explanations Sheb and the baby locked wrists and began to weep; these loud sniffles alarmed the dorm mates, Morris, Sam, and Irwin, because they couldn’t locate any genuine cause for such spontaneous commotion, and they had no chance to realize that Sheb and the baby were given to long cries, that they had behaved like this in the egg store, under fire escapes, and on the farm. They were crying for their sustained infanthood, for the white patches that had sprouted on Jeronimo’s scalp early in life, for the little indignities that had swelled their knuckles and shortened their necks in the Bronx, for their inadequacies in matters concerning the making of money, for their dependence on brothers, fathers, and a sister-in-law, for their heavy drugged sleep in which they dreamed of winter storms, sewer floods, collapsing fire escapes, burning roofs, Bronx volcanoes, for the fright they carried with them during the hours they were awake. Sheb broke the wristlock and wiped the baby’s eyes with a pajama cuff. Morris winked to Irwin, Irwin winked to Sam. “Kookoo.” The baby prolonged his goodbyes, exploring under Shebby’s sleeve with half a knuckle. Sheb understood the implications of the gesture; the baby wouldn’t be back until the fall. “Jerónimo, watch out for dead branches. Don’t come home with a splinter in your ass.” They kissed for the last time, Sam sticking out his lip and becoming Jerónimo for the benefit of Irwin and Morris. “Put your face where it belongs,” Sheb told Sam after he sent the baby off. He gave the dollars to Morris (the toilet paper he kept). “Find your teeth and go to the corner. Get us a mixed assortment. Some apricots, some pears, some prunes.”
“And dates,” Irwin said.
“And dates,” Sheb confirmed. “The man can’t shit without his dates.”
Jerónimo whisked through the nurses’ station. The old men standing in the hall with their robes on caught the bobbing earmuffs and a navy blue cape. They wondered what mischief a walking blue coat could bring. The baby saw Isaac and his chauffeur at the bottom of the stairs. Brodsky was grinning and dangling his handcuffs at Jerónimo. Isaac was carrying a fat cardboard box.
“We got him,” Brodsky squealed, his lungs thick with anticipation. “Chief, should I go for his arms or his legs?”
Brodsky blocked the stairwell, and the baby would have had to climb over the chauffeur’s head or run up to the roof. He crouched on a middle step. Isaac made Brodsky lower the handcuffs.
“Jerónimo, come down.”
Brodsky whispered to the Chief. “Isaac, don’t be strange. Put a bracelet on his leg and he’ll lead you to Zorro. I’ve dealt with dummies before. I know their shtick.”
“Brodsky, get out of his way.”
The chauffeur humped himself into a corner, regret ballooning out on his face. Brodsky had taken up Isaac’s cause with so much vehemence, he couldn’t let a Guzmann go free and not damage some of his own tightened parts. He developed a cough on the stairwell. Isaac wouldn’t console him. The baby edged down a shoulder at a time and slipped between Isaac and his man without rubbing either of them (a remarkable feat considering the narrowness of the stairs and the chauffeur’s hefty proportions). Isaac had to shout fast or lose him completely.
“Jerónimo, tell your father he may have some frozen berries on his hands this summer. I’ll be looking for him. There’s no China wall between here and Loch Sheldrake. Jerónimo …”
The boy was out of reach, so he pointed Brodsky up the stairs and away from Jeronimo’s tracks.
“I can catch him on the run, Isaac. He won’t dodge my bus so quick.”
“We came for Shebby, not the boy. I’ll have my day with Zorro. I don’t need a baby for that.”
They passed the nurses’ station flicking their shields and went to Shebby’s dorm. Morris, Sam, and Irwin had never been entertained by a deputy chief inspector. They crowed for Isaac and hid the egg stains on their pajamas. They assured Isaac’s man how satisfied they were with the police. “No bums can get up these steps,” Morris chirped. But Shebby wouldn’t commit himself. He focused on Sam, whose face happened to be in view, and scowled at him for his readiness to become Isaac’s pansy. Sheb was a harder man to buy. He hadn’t candled eggs on Boston Road for nothing. Sitting in the dark of Albert’s store he was always the first to hear the thump of bookmakers and other fancy men who fell off the roofs for shifting their allegiances a little too often. Sheb couldn’t kiss Jerónimo and then be comfortable with Isaac. As next of kin he was entitled to the private belongings of Coen’s police locker, also to Coen’s wallet, and to the short pants, blue shirt, and sneakers Coen had died in, all of which Isaac removed from the cardboard box and presented to Sheb. Irwin was awed by the blood on the sneakers and the shirt. Morris and Sam settled on the shoehorn from Coen’s locker.
“Poor bastard,” Brodsky muttered sufficiently near the Chief, then apologized to Sheb. “Sorry, Mr. Coen. But your nephew was some cop. They feared him out there, they really did. Ping-pong, that’s how they got to him. He was too tough on the street.”
“Don’t I know who he is?” Shebby said. “Why did you bring me his stinking clothes?”
“Keepsakes,” Brodsky said, proud of his vocabulary. “Mementos. What’s wrong with you? You should have respect for a dead man’s stuff.”
Shebby poked through the wallet. He found certain insurance cards, pictures of an old wife’s girls. He ripped open all the flaps. “Where’s the money?”
“That’s more complicated, Mr. Coen. The property clerk has it. Don’t worry, it’ll get to you. Maybe four dollars in change. But what’s four dollars to you? You’re a rich man, Mr. Coen.” Brodsky nudged his Chief for some cooperation. “Isaac, show him Manfred’s policies.”
Isaac had been staring at the shoehorn, the sneakers, the filthy drinking cup, the razor blades, the shaving glass, the bent spoon, droppings of a sorry man, and he felt mean and grubby for having the urge to gl
orify Coen, dress him up in front of Sheb and his three companions. Shed didn’t need beatitudes from Isaac. So he restricted himself to the policies in paper jackets that he took out of his coat, intoning on insurance coupons, death benefits, and fiduciaries, and after adding up the sums, he told everybody in the dorm that Sheb would receive fifteen thousand dollars in a matter of five years. Sam rolled his eyes in deep respect “Fifteen thousand?” Morris went numb with envy. Irwin studied the policies in their jackets. “Shebby, we’ll be kings here. No more black and white. We can afford the color television.”
Sheb wasn’t taken in by enormities. “Never mind the fifteen thousand. Just give me the four dollars that belongs to me.”
The Chief couldn’t function in the middle of such intransigence. Brodsky had to remind him of the medal in his pocket. “Esau,” Brodsky said. And Isaac fished with a whole hand. The medal had a silver backing, a ribbon in blue and white, and Coen’s name and dates of service on the front, under a ram’s horn. Isaac pinned the medal on Sheb’s pajamas, pricking his finger in the act. He took one long suck at the blood, delivered a citation from the Hands of Esau outlining Coen’s bravery in getting killed and mentioning his place of honor among gentiles and the Jews, then he clasped Shebby’s hand, withholding the finger with the blood, and walked out, Brodsky behind him.
Sheb had chewed half the ribbon before Sam and Irwin could pull the medal away; the clasp broke off in the struggle, and Morris searched for all the pieces. Sheb had blue and white threads in his mouth. Irwin lectured him. “Moron, that’s no way to treat a medal.”
Sheb was crying without making a sound; only his throat moved. The boys didn’t know what to do; they had just learned to tolerate his thick wet cries with Jerónimo. They couldn’t find a tear on Shebby’s body. Morris waved his paws over Shebby’s eyes. “Sheb, do you hate your nephew so much?”
“Talk to us,” Irwin said. “Shebby, be fair.”
“Morris,” Sam said, “go get him his dried fruit. Maybe an apricot will moisten his tongue.”
The threads began to curl under Shebby’s lip. Sam didn’t dare pick them off. He signaled to Irwin and waited for Morris to get back. They fed him apricots, pears, dates, and prunes out of an oily bag. Shebby didn’t spit apricots. The food went down. He swallowed dates and threads. He strained to belch. Morris had to slap his ribs for the belch to come. But his crying was the same. They could squeeze no more noises out of him. So they retired to their own beds. Irwin passed the bag around. They ate whatever fruit was left. The apricot bark was tough. They kept spitting out the skin. Sheb looked at the wall.
“Short pants,” he said.
“Shebby, say what you mean.”
“What detective dies in short pants?”
“Shebby, he was doing his ping-pong. It was only circumstance. Would you be any happier if your nephew ruined a good pair of slacks?”
Shebby still wouldn’t wear the medal. “They took Albert’s boy and turned him into a swan.”
Sam shrugged his head. Morris and Irwin exchanged cockeyed stares. What could you do with a man who begrudged insurance policies and wanted to eat a medal? Sheb was busy eradicating Coens in his head. He had been doing fine, moving his bowels without anybody’s help, getting by on Jeronimo’s visits until Isaac brought him pants and sneakers in a box, and woke him to all the incapacities of the Coens. They could sing to him about badges and medals and bloodrags; the boy had no business being a cop. When he saw that rookie suit for the first time, the satchel with the nightstick poking out, the probation grays, Manfred smiling under the bill of his cop hat, Shebby should have bitten through the sleeves, held Manfred by the calf and proved to him the folly of a Coen in such a hat. The nephew presented Sheb with his gray pants after graduating from the Police Academy. Sheb wore them without having to lower the cuffs. So who’s the fool in cop pants? Who’s the angel-eyed boy? Sheb the candler winked at bloodclots thirty years, a boarder in his brother’s house, and ended his long sit with the Coens pampering an oven for Albert. Kill a brother and inherit his son’s pants. That’s the logic of the Coens.
Sheb smelled fire in the walls. He picked on Sam who occupied the neighboring bed. “Run for your life. The roof’s burning.”
Sam deferred to Morris and Irwin, younger men, men with broader chests. They surrounded Sheb with blankets. This was the third fire Sheb had smelled in a week. Sam figured he might be agitated over the medal. “Should I call the nurse?”
“No.”
They stuffed the blankets on him, covering him up to his ears. He would stop smelling fires if they could make him sweat.
“Shebby, are you warm?”
They put stockings on his hands and feet. Morris traced a finger around Shebby’s ears. They didn’t smile until the finger came off wet. They allowed him to bake another minute before returning to their beds.
The DI, Herbert Pimloe, watched the young, smart deputies shuffle from their cubicles to Isaac’s rooms. These “angels” were grooming themselves for their own inspectorships; they smiled for no one but Isaac. He, Pimloe, could never be an Isaac man; his eyes weren’t blue enough, and he wouldn’t wear garters in the field (or a padded bra). He had dropped eleven pounds since Isaac rose out of the Bronx to occupy Pimloe’s chair. The DI wasn’t an ingrate; he recognized elemental truths, that he’d inherited this same chair from Isaac himself. But the loss of a view from his windows on Cleveland Place, the usurpation of his chauffeur Brodsky, and the indignity of his new quarters (a poorly ventilated closet)—such things debilitated him. The office was Isaac’s roost, and Pimloe could scratch himself or get out.
The DI had certain options. He wouldn’t apply to the First Dep’s car pool for another chauffeur, but he could wheedle a job with the District Attorney, or pack in police work and become head of security at one of the Islip shopping centers. He resisted these moves. Hating Isaac couldn’t make him disloyal to his office. Pimloe was a First Deputy man. He would have to ride through Isaac’s redemption. So he scratched. And scratched. And scratched.
Isolated in his closet, a perpetual dampness in his nose (not even rain could penetrate the air shaft behind Pimloe’s wall), he went looking for Odile. The DI was partial to three-piece suits; he tried The Dwarf wearing Scottish wool and made a strong impression on one of the bouncers. Sweeney was harsh with him out of jealousy. She refused to accept that Odile could have a boyfriend so refined. She preferred Jew pimps and China trash with Odile, men she could openly despise. The DI’s sadness was hard to overcome. She could taste his damp wool. “Cuntface,” she said (meaning Pimloe), “the queen’s at home. She attends the sick on Thursdays and Fridays. Knock soft on her door. You can’t tell who you’re liable to find.”
The DI didn’t follow Sweeney’s cautions; he rang Odile’s downstairs bell without disguising his voice. “It’s me, Herbert,” he sang into the intercom. “Don’t be scared. It’s a social call.” He expected arguments from Odile, but the door buzzed, and he stepped into the house.
Odile was in a panic upstairs, certain that Pimloe had come with Isaac and a raiding party of First Deputy men. She had Zorro with her, and she was pushing him into his clothes. He’d been inside her apartment for three days, mourning Coen and the Chinaman, and God knows how many more. He wouldn’t talk. She’d shaved him and scrubbed him, afraid to touch his genitals or leave the house. They’d fed on saltines and sour beer. Now she had to fit his seaman’s cap on his skull and get him out the fire escape before Isaac’s angels surrounded the block. She propped him over the windowsill, aimed his feet at the iron stairs. She couldn’t hide the affection in her shoves: Odile was cuckoo for all the Guzmanns. She began to cry. “César, watch yourself. This Isaac shows up everywhere. I’ll bake cookies for Jerónimo, I will.” She kissed him on the mouth, felt the strength of his lip (was he chewing or kissing back?), and closed the window on him. She couldn’t stall the DI.
Pimloe was amazed at how fast he got through Odile’s chain guard. His mouth puffed ready to
speak, ready to explain himself, and Odile had him in her room, the door locked again, the peephole back in place. Playing hostess she patted his trousers for a gun, eyed him down for suspicious lumps, and came away from him with a befuddled look; the DI was pistolfree. Still, Zorro needed time to walk the fire escape, so she offered to mash some lemons in Pimloe’s drink.
“Thanks,” he said. “I don’t want a highball.”
She would have undressed without any signals from him (she was wearing a flimsy shift without pockets), coaxed him toward her mattress, suffered his policeman’s body on hers, for Zorro, but the dark, unhealthy lines of his face, the sag in Pimloe’s cheeks, intimidated her, made her keep her shift on. That smelly wool on him had a certain power over Odile. At least one of them ought to undress, that’s how she figured. “Get comfortable, Herbert You must be itchy in your suit.”
He was obedient with her, and she hung vest, coat, and trousers in her closet, clamping the door shut. She smiled; she had him down to his underpants, and he couldn’t chase Zorro this way. He was making spit with his tongue.
“Herbert, what’s your trouble?”
“I got kicked in the teeth. They’ve been shunting me like a dirty head of cabbage.”
“Who, Herbert? Who’s that? I thought you were solid at the office.”
Blue Eyes Page 21