He had immediate police protection. Bernardo Dublin, a Bronx detective who’d come right out of the Jokers, lived at the motel. It wasn’t the address Bernardo gave to the NYPD, but he kept all his clothes and guns with the Shooter. He had red hair and a red mustache and looked like an Irish-Latino linebacker. Sidel had plucked him off the streets, educated Bernardo, pushed him through the Police Academy. Bernardo owned a small chunk of the motel, had become a silent partner in most of the Shooter’s enterprises.
He befriended the prostitutes, took his meals with them at the motel, lent them money, punched out any john who abused them or tried to set one of the girls on fire. He was like a hulking housemother with a gold shield and a Glock. Gumm found him writhing on the floor in the main room of the bungalow he and Bernardo shared. Bernardo wasn’t wearing any clothes. He was drinking Polish vodka. His eyes were bloodshot. The red fur on his body resembled raw silk.
“Bernardo, guess who took me to lunch?”
“Father Time.”
“Almost,” Abner said. “El Caballo. He’s fallen in love with Angel Carpenteros.”
Bernardo’s mustache began to quiver. “How did that happen?”
“Like it always does with El Caballo. He was stumbling around on Jerome Avenue. Mimi spotted him, or he might have walked into the motel. He took a hike on Featherbed Lane and saw Angel’s art. He flipped over it, and got in touch with the borough historian. Me.”
“What’s the problem, Shooter?”
“If El Caballo gets himself a prodigy, he’ll be poking around here all the time. You’ll lose your crib, I’ll lose mine … Bernardo, he’ll close us down, crib after crib.”
“So what? You’ll open new ones. He’s the mayor. His mind is blown out. He has the attention span of an ape … did you lie to him about Angel? The Big Guy is still good at catching lies.”
“He’ll never find Angel … because you’re gonna ice the kid.”
“Paulito’s baby brother? You’re dreaming, Shooter.”
“Paulito’s in isolation. And we’ll keep him there. He’ll never even notice the kid is gone.”
“I’ll notice … he’s practically my godson.” Bernardo crawled around with his rump in the air, dove under a table, retrieved his holster, and handed it to Gumm. “You kill Angel if you’re so hot about it.”
Gumm dangled the holster as if he were clutching a dead rat by the tail. “Me? I’m not mechanical. I wouldn’t even know how to pull the trigger.”
“You’re handy with a camera, aint you?”
“It’s nothing,” Gumm said. “A simple box with a shutter. I solved it when I was five years old … but I still can’t change the film.”
“Then quit that prince of darkness routine. I’m not doing the kid.”
Gumm’s two-way radio began to whistle. “Shooter, Shooter, can you read?”
“Mimi, are you dropping pellets all over the place? Tone down.”
“A pair of patrolmen just cuffed Daisy Pell.”
“Where are they from?”
“Fox Street. The Four-One.”
“What are they doin’ so far afield?”
“We’re getting famous … come on, they’re walking her across the moat.”
“Relax. Bernardo will handle it. Tell Abdul to hide his Nighthawk.”
Bernardo took his holster back from Gumm. He’d already crept into his clothes. He was wearing jeans and a denim shirt from the Gap. He put on a mustard-colored jacket and cowboy boots from Buffalo Chips, and shot across the lawn to the registration office, where he met two beefy patrolmen who had Daisy Pell with her hands cuffed behind her back and were screaming at the Shooter’s day clerk.
“We’re gonna close you down, boy. Who’s the hotshot around here?”
“I am,” Bernardo said, rage building under his red mustache as he saw the handcuffs bite into Daisy’s wrists.
“Well, son, we caught this young lady leading a john toward the premises.”
“Where’s the john?”
The patrolmen looked at each other, shrugged. “Who the fuck do you think you are?”
“Mr. Death … unshackle Daisy. The cuffs are too tight.”
“And how much you gonna give us to uncuff the little sweetheart?”
“I’ll give you your life,” Bernardo said, pulling out his Glock and digging it between the first patrolman’s eyes. The second patrolman fumbled with his keys and unlocked the handcuffs. Daisy Pell kissed Bernardo on the cheek and walked out of the office.
“Call your station,” Bernardo said.
“What?”
“Call your station. Get your commander on the phone. I’d like to ask him why two clowns from Fox Street decided to rip off the Castle Motel. Did he put you up to this?”
“No. We just …”
Bernardo placed his gold shield against the second patrolman’s mouth and made him kiss the metal.
“I’m with the anti-gang brigade, Detective Bernardo Dublin. Should I write down my shield number?”
“No, Detective. That isn’t …”
“We’ve been staking out this motel for months, and when assholes like you interfere with our work, start making false arrests and asking a little key money, we have to discourage that sort of thing … get down on your knees. Both of you.”
“Why?”
Bernardo kicked the first patrolman in the groin. Both of them got down on their knees, hugged the floor, avoided Bernardo’s eyes.
“Who am I?”
“Mr. Death … Bernardo Dublin.”
“You remember that.”
Bernardo drove the two patrolmen into the wall with a barrage of punches and kicks. The Shooter leapt into the office and pleaded for the two patrolmen.
“Bernardo, you’re killing them. We don’t need that complication.”
“They didn’t have to hurt Daisy, cuff her so hard.”
“She’ll get over it,” the Shooter said.
Bernardo stepped out onto the phony grass that reminded him of an archery range without archers. He thought of Angel Carpenteros, that kid the Shooter wanted him to ice, and he wondered how Angel would have drawn the Castle Motel. With archers perhaps and long, slender arrows that could pierce the armor of women, trees, and men.
Part Two
5
ROOSTER RAMIREZ OF FEATHERBED LANE
REST IN PEACE, HOMEY
PAID FOR BY THE LATIN JOKERS
Rooster had red hair. You couldn’t see much of his eyes in the mural. But he wore a blue handkerchief on his head, with four little knots that represented royalty; he’d been one of the Jokers’ wise men. Rooster was thirteen when he died. And it took Angel a whole hour to draw that handkerchief with the knots and get it to look like a crown.
Angel never liked to work from photographs. He had to know a face by heart. But he would spend hours picking through the family album of a dead boy, memorizing whatever he could. He was like a scavenger, but it was part of his profession. For all the dead homeys of the South Bronx, Angel was the only artist in town. He painted monuments on a wall. When a homey fell, hit by the cops or some motherjumper, the homey’s gang would hire Angel to prepare a war memorial.
The Jokers would never haggle with him. Angel had the status of a priest. He prepared the little texts, decided on the drawing. The Jokers picked the wall, and Angel did the rest. His big brother, Paulito, who was in max security on Rikers Island, was the Jokers’ mastermind. Paulito ran the gang from his prison cell. And it was because of Paul that Angel had acquired his monopoly on war memorials and could charge such an extravagant price. Rooster Ramirez, RIP, had cost the Jokers five hundred bills.
He was twelve years old and the richest kid in his class until he stopped going to school. He had a business to run and he had to nurse his bank accounts. Angel couldn’t paint a wall after the sun went down. Light was precious to him, light was an unpredictable god. He couldn’t piss it away inside a classroom, taking part in spelling bees and learning lies.
He was standing on his ladder, finishing Rooster’s red hair, when he felt a chill on his back. He didn’t have to turn around. He could smell Richardson’s perfumed soap.
“You shouldn’t come here,” Angel said. “If the Jokers catch you, I’ll lose my franchise.”
Richardson laughed. “Who’s been teaching you such big words, homey?”
He liked to wear suspenders and cowboy boots and carry a gun inside his pants. He wasn’t a policeman, but he ran a whole brigade of cops whose only job was to break up gangs in the Bronx.
“You haven’t been to see me, homey, and you haven’t been to school.”
“I’m an artist.”
“Congratulations. But Picasso wasn’t a hooky player.”
“He would have been if he’d ever lived in the Bronx.”
“Alyosha,” Richardson said. Alyosha was some kind of a saint in a book called The Brothers Karamazov. And Alyosha was also a “saint” in Richardson’s books at the county courthouse. Angel had tried to read The Brothers Karamazov, but he couldn’t understand a line. A father kept biting his sons until the sons started biting back. They were all in love with a beautiful blond witch named Grushenka.
“I’m cutting loose,” Angel said.
“Homey, you belong to us.”
“I have a right to buy my soul back. I’ve been looking at law books in the library.”
“Look again. You’re on my payroll, Alyosha. And you’re staying there.”
“You’ve been corrupting minors,” Angel said. “You could go to jail.”
Richardson clutched Angel’s pants and lifted him off the ladder. “And who could go right back into Spofford?”
Angel had spent three months at the Spofford Juvenile Detention Center when he was eleven; he had to punk for the older boys. Not even Paulito’s reputation could reach inside a children’s jail. The older boys had made him put on lipstick and wear a dress; he had to skulk around in high heels; one of the guards had fondled him. It was Richardson who got him out of there, and now he was Richardson’s little man, a salaried stool pigeon of the Bronx brigade, who’d ratted on his own brother’s gang.
“Put me down.”
Richardson tossed Angel into his mustard-colored Ford. His men loved dark yellow; they had mustard-colored walls at their headquarters, mustard-colored notebooks, mustard-colored shoes.
“Richardson, lemme take my ladder.”
“Leave it there,” Richardson said and drove down Featherbed Lane. Angel wasn’t worried. He was considered a holy boy in the ’hood. No one would touch his materials … or ask why that gangbuster, Brock Richardson, swiped him off the street; Richardson had declared war on the Latin Jokers, and it was only natural for him to kidnap Paulito’s little brother, the Jokers’ artist-priest.
He rolled a joint for Angel and himself. Richardson’s brigade was full of dope fiends. You couldn’t walk into his headquarters without the smell of grass. He called it medicine and mustard seeds. His hands were marked with that same mustard color. And he was turning Angel into an addict. The boy would lean back in that mustard-colored Ford and dream of getting out of the Bronx. He’d buy a condominium with the money he saved from his murals and sit in the dark until Paulito came home from Rikers. He couldn’t really celebrate without Paul.
“Richardson, when’s my brother getting out?”
“He’s safe where he is … Paulito has his own fucking prison. He’d die out on the street. I’d have to kill him.”
“He’s only nineteen and his hair is turning white.”
“So what? It makes him look distinguished. He’s a gangleader, isn’t he?”
“He’s an old man,” Angel said, his eyes burning from all the mustard-colored smoke. But even in his marijuana haze, he could tell that Richardson had cruised past the courthouse.
“Richardson, where the hell are we going?”
“To kindergarten.”
“I thought you fixed it so I didn’t have to go to school.”
“It’s a special kindergarten for little geniuses.”
“Richardson, lemme out of the car.”
Richardson was already getting crazy from the mustard seeds he’d sucked in. He pulled out his Glock and held it between Angel’s eyes.
“I’ll blow your fucking brains out.”
“Richardson, you can’t afford to glock me. I’m your little man.”
Richardson shouldn’t have been wearing a gun. But he was a prosecutor with his own brigade, an Indian fighter. And Angel had to laugh, because the Bronx’s only Indians were wild kids like Rooster Ramirez, who were much more noble than anyone in Richardson’s brigade.
All the Latin Jokers carried Glocks. It was a very temperamental gun. You could shoot yourself in the foot if you didn’t carry it right. Angel couldn’t remember who had started the habit. The Marines or the Mafia. But it had become the biggest status symbol in the Bronx. You could wear the wrong leather jacket, ride in the wrong car, but you had to have your Glock.
They drove across the Third Avenue Bridge, and Angel wasn’t sure if he was in the mood for Manhattan. He had to finish raising up Rooster on a wall. Richardson rode into a park with its own guard at the gate. Then they got out and walked up to a mansion with white walls and a green door.
The house was full of people. They all looked like putas and cops and maricónes. Angel wanted to run. But Richardson blinked at him with his mustard eyes. “Behave yourself. You’re my protégé … can you guess where we are?”
“Sure. It’s the mansion of some hot millionaire who raises putas and maricónes.”
“It’s the mayor’s house, little man.”
Angel knew all about the Big Jew, Isaac Sidel, the first policeman ever to become mayor of New York. Angel had seen him on the tube with his sideburns and the dark eyes of a gypsy. The Big Jew could have come right out of Karamazov country. He was always crying at funerals and running around in the mayor’s personal coach with a blanket on his knees, like Papa Karamazov. But he wasn’t a miser or a moneygrubber. He wouldn’t sit in the mansion and give himself to rich people. He wanted to remake the world. And now Angel understood what this little party was all about. Sidel had reached beyond the schools to start his own cultural enrichment crap. It was named after Merlin, the wizard of King Arthur’s court. And all the maricónes were called Merliners. Angel would have to get the hell out of there. He wasn’t going to join King Isaac’s court. The Big Jew could toss him back into public school and that would bite into Angel’s art career.
He darted past Richardson and got near the door, but a hand plucked him from behind and pulled him back into the crowd. “Maricón,” he muttered, when he turned around and saw those telltale sideburns that belonged to Sidel, the guy who couldn’t lose an election, who took the Bronx by storm, with ninety percent of the vote.
“Alyosha,” the Big Jew said, and Angel was spooked, because Richardson had given out his code name. Isaac must have known that Angel Carpenteros, aka Alyosha, was the mascot and secret snitch of the Bronx brigade.
Richardson appeared behind him. “Brock,” the mayor said, “thanks for bringing Alyosha. I’ve been waiting to meet the little moralist.”
“Muralist, you mean,” Richardson said.
“No, no,” the mayor said. “He’s a moralist … that’s what moves me. His colors can condemn.”
“Your Honor,” Angel said, bolder now. “There’s a bunch of children in the room. How’d you guess who I am?”
“It’s your coat.”
Angel was wearing his painter’s rags. Richardson hadn’t given him a chance to change into street clothes.
“I asked Brock if he would invite you to join the Merliners … are you on his baseball team?”
“Mr. Mayor,” Angel said, “I don’t have much time for baseball.”
Angel almost liked the Big Jew. The Jokers dressed much better than the mayor of New York, who was wearing a jacket that could have come out of a charity store. He looked like a brainy bum.
&
nbsp; His deputies tore at his sleeves, and Isaac had to run off with them and solve ten riddles at a time, including a baseball strike that was beginning to sink the Bronx.
“Richardson,” the boy said, “if the mayor knows who I am, I’ll never leave this mansion alive.”
“Angel, he lives in the clouds. He doesn’t know shit.”
“But you told him my name was Alyosha.”
“So what? You sign your murals with a big fat A. The A could be anything. I’m building you up, little man. Alyosha sounds like an artist from the Bronx.”
“But what if he peeks into your books and finds Alyosha.”
“He can’t peek. My books are confidential. But suppose he does. He’ll think I stole that name from the real Alyosha. You.”
“I still don’t like it. You can keep Merlin. I don’t want to be enriched.”
“It’s too late. I scored my points with the Big Jew. I found Alyosha for him. I found the mural boy. I can’t take him away. It would be suicide for me and my men. Isaac will kick us clear into the sea.”
“But he’ll learn that I’m a hooky player.”
“Not a chance. He’ll know what we want him to know. We’re the warriors, you and me. He’s just a king inside an enchanted cottage. Did you have a good look at him? His shoelaces weren’t even tied. His socks don’t match. He’s like an ostrich with his head in the sand.”
“I’m not …”
And then he saw a blond brat with blue eyes, a baby Grushenka, talking to King Isaac. Her bounciness and her beauty troubled Angel. She couldn’t have come from the South Bronx. She took birdlike sips from her coffee cup. She had a paper napkin balled inside her sleeve.
“Who’s that?”
“A Merliner,” Richardson said.
Sidel brought her over. “Alyosha, meet Marianna Storm. She’ll be one of your mates.”
Marianna Storm cast her blue eyes on “Alyosha,” and suddenly he was glad he had a code name.
“Alyosha is the most brilliant artist we have in the Bronx.”
“Uncle Isaac, does he exhibit in one of the downtown galleries?”
El Bronx (The Isaac Sidel Novels) Page 3