El Bronx (The Isaac Sidel Novels)

by Jerome Charyn

  Isaac ruffled his nose. “This kid doesn’t do galleries. He paints on walls. It’s strictly noncommercial. Alyosha remembers the dead.”

  And before Alyosha could take her telephone number, Richardson dragged him out of the mansion, making excuses to Isaac and Marianna Storm. “Isaac, the kid can’t socialize too long. He’s a month behind on his murals.”

  Angel began to sulk in Richardson’s car.

  “Why couldn’t I do some exploring? The little puta likes me.”

  “Alyosha, you can rap all you want, strut like a rooster—”

  “Don’t say rooster. Rooster died because of us.”

  “Sorry. I’ll be more careful. I’m lending you to the Merliners, but you can’t get too close. You might start confiding in this Marianna Storm, and I’d lose my best little man. Play along with the Big Jew, kiss Marianna Storm in the dark, feel her titties, but you don’t talk about yourself. Her father’s the biggest honcho in baseball. J. Michael Storm.”

  “Never heard of him.

  Richardson delivered Alyosha to the courthouse. They sat in the brigade’s mustard-colored rooms looking at mug shots of every prominent gang member in the South Bronx. Half the borough was a no-man’s-land. The cops couldn’t rule the Bronx. They were like an invading army that would arrive during some explosion between the gangs. It was only Richardson’s infiltration that could ruin a gang, Richardson’s surgical strokes.

  Alyosha sat behind three locked doors and spilled the foibles of Bronx bandits like Dog Face and David Six Fingers and El Rabbito, who would fall one by one, as Alyosha roamed among them like a little saint, pinpointing their activities.

  “Rabbito is looking to whack David Six Fingers, because David slept with Rabbito’s puta and has her underpants to prove it. I saw the panties. They’re all red.”

  “And when’s the massacre going to take place?”

  “I’m not a mind reader, Richardson. But you ought to figure out where. At David’s hobby shop on Jerome Avenue. Because David is crazy about model airplanes, and he lives on a steady diet of airplane glue. Now can I go home?”

  “Not yet. What about the Jokers?”

  “Richardson, they’re asleep. They can’t move without Paulito.”

  “That’s not what I heard. They’ve been bopping around Hunts Point. And they’ve taken over a new housing project.”

  “What do you expect? You’ve been clipping so many gangs that the Jokers gotta fill the vacuum or some Dominican drugstore will move right into the project and start selling wholesale.”

  “Gimme the name of Paulito’s new point man.”

  “My brother’s not stupid. He picks a guy, and that guy gets socked in the head.”

  “Alyosha, who’s walking point for Paul?”

  “The Mouse.”

  “Mousy’s a cripple, for Christ’s sake.”

  “That’s the whole idea. No one would expect a cripple.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Richardson said. “It’s beneath your brother. Who put that stinking idea into his head?”

  “Me. Alyosha.”

  Richardson stared at him. “Did Mousy ever do something to hurt you?”

  “His cousin Felipe was at Spofford. And Felipe made me suck his dick.”

  “So Mousy has to suffer?”

  “That’s your choice, Richardson. But Mousy’s holding the gang together. He’s the Jokers’ general. If you don’t stop him, he’s gonna win the Bronx.”

  “I can’t go in and order a hit. It wouldn’t be ethical.”

  “Get David Six Fingers to do it. He hates the Mouse.”

  “But David isn’t on my payroll. I could get caught in the middle … hiring gangleaders to annihilate each other.”

  “Richardson, can I go home?”

  “Not until you promise to talk to David. I’ll give you a hundred extra bills.”

  “It’s dangerous. A Joker can’t walk into David’s hobby shop.”

  “Come on, you’re protected. You’re a priest.”

  “David will get suspicious if I rat out my brother’s new general. He’ll throw airplane glue in my eyes.”

  Alyosha went down in the private elevator, reserved for judges, politicians, and registered rats. He arrived in the basement, which had once been a tiny jail and was now a canteen for court attendants and the district attorney’s elite squad of cops, called the Apaches because they terrorized the Bronx. They were buccaneers who collected booty from whoever they could and stored it in the basement. They robbed from local merchants, from gangs like the Latin Jokers and the Phantom Fives, from druglords, from less ambitious pirate-cops who lacked the Apaches’ organizational skills. Richardson’s pool of men came from the Apaches. And his Apaches were so pernicious because a couple of them had graduated from the gangs themselves, had been recruited into the NYPD by Sidel himself, when he was with the First Deputy’s office …

  Alyosha walked through the Apaches’ little warehouse and sneaked out the back door, landing opposite Yankee Stadium, with its great white bowl and its system of flags. Alyosha had never been inside that bowl. His uncles had told him about another stadium, a phantom field across the Harlem River, which once had a team of Latino All-Stars. Juan Marichal, Orlando Cepeda, the brothers Alou, who played like Apaches, eating up the National League. But that stadium had been destroyed, its hill taken up by a housing project. And Alyosha wondered what would happen to Yankee Stadium, which sat like another phantom field in the middle of a baseball strike. The Yankees had been keeping the Bronx alive. Now merchants were having heart attacks and feeding off the fat of their own lives.

  Alyosha didn’t care. He could draw his greatest mural on those phantom walls. He’d dedicate it to the brothers Alou. He’d paint every building in the South Bronx, even the ones that had been torched, call it Puerto Rican Paradise. But he had some business to do first.

  He went into David Six Fingers’ hobby shop on Jerome Avenue, right under the elevated tracks. David lived his whole life in the shadow of the tracks. He was thirty-three years old, war counselor of the Phantom Fives, which was a gang without real warriors. Paulito let the gang exist because he liked David, who had an extra thumb on his right hand and had sold Paulito model planes when Paulito was a little boy, David sniffed airplane glue all day and smoked hash in that dark closet of his. He had a pair of bodyguards, who were sitting on the floor playing Monopoly on a bumpy board, their Glocks sitting beside them. Alyosha could have glocked them with their own guns. But he’d have lost his status as a priest.

  David Six Fingers sat in the gloom, holding a razor inside his extra thumb, carving a spacecraft that looked like a bullet with two heads. He was building a space station that would link the Bronx with Mars. He had all the concentration and the beauty of a boy. The modeling had saved him from the bitter rebellion of a ganglord. He modeled cars and planes with the swift imagination he used to plan attacks on an enemy gang. But the attacks failed. David’s warriors didn’t have the depths of David’s mind. And the hobby shop was almost like a tomb. Children no longer came to buy his wares. David Six Fingers had to model for himself. But a hobby shop was made for children, and the lost revenue was killing David.

  “Niño, I’m waiting for your brother to give me a license to sell.”

  “Paulito can’t give out licenses. He’s rotting away. The Apaches put him in max security and swallowed the key.”

  “And this isn’t max security? A hobby shop without a hobby.”

  “Don’t complain. Your troubles haven’t started yet.”

  David Six Fingers slid the razor across his hand like a lizard. “Niño, I don’t like pissy little painters threatening me.”

  “It’s not a threat, David. Mousy’s been getting big ideas. He’s in love with your hobby shop. He wants it for the Jokers … as a canteen.”

  “Mouse wouldn’t do shit without your brother’s consent.”

  “I told you. Paul can’t communicate. It’s the Mouse’s show.”

  “And
what you want me to do? Beg the Mouse for some mercy?”

  “No. Cut him with your razor, ear to ear. It’s the only solution,” Alyosha said.

  “And why you telling me this?”

  “Mousy’s cousin made me suck his dick.”

  David blinked and dropped the razor. “Where? When?”

  “At Spofford. And if the Mouse can’t control his own cousin, he deserves to die. David, do what you want. Finish the Mouse or let him finish you.”

  Alyosha bought a Flying Tiger with some of the pocket money Richardson had given him, and David Six Fingers was stunned by the sale. The Flying Tiger had perfect markings. David had spent a month on the details, sanding and polishing every strut. He’d crawled into the womb of World War II, and he’d been modeling vintage planes like the Messerschmitt and the Flying Tiger …

  “You want me to wrap it in tissue paper?”

  “No,” Alyosha said. “I’ll carry it home.”

  “It’s delicate. The wind could …”

  Alyosha walked out of the hobby shop, his fingers clutching the bow of the plane. He took a gypsy cab up to Mt. Eden Avenue and ran into the building where he’d lived with Paulito and now lived alone. He was the only tenant. The building had already been abandoned by its latest landlord. It had no electricity or running water. But Paulito had brought in a master plumber and electrician, who connected the pipes and the electrical outlets to the nursing home next door, and Alyosha had all his essential services. He even made monthly contributions to the nursing home. It was like paying his gas and electricity bill. And he didn’t really mind being all alone. His mom had died of tuberculosis, and his pappy was running around somewhere, doing mischief. Alyosha was a child of the courts, but no court had come to claim him … after he got out of Spofford. He was supposed to be in the custody of Carmelita, his maiden aunt, but Carmelita had enough problems without him. A bastard son who beat her; a fiancé who robbed her blind. And Alyosha didn’t like the neighborhood. Carmelita’s only view was the Cross Bronx Expressway, a concrete ribbon that rose into the sky like a fat honeycomb filled with trucks and cars. He preferred the dead calm of Mt. Eden Avenue.

  Alyosha went up to the roof with his Flying Tiger.

  He could still smell the airplane glue under the paper wings. No one else on the planet could build a model plane like David Six Fingers. He wasn’t born to lead a gang. But the Phantom Fives were the only homeys who had their headquarters in a hobby shop.

  Alyosha launched the plane, let it glide over the roof, into the dark power of the wind, watched the paper begin to rip and reveal the wooden struts … until its skeleton was bared. Bits of David’s best balsa wood fell away, and still the Flying Tiger flew, as indestructible as the Latin Jokers, and then a wing split, and the Tiger crashed into a wall of the nursing home.

  6

  Alyosha had to play the pious little priest when Mousy was found in a lot behind Featherbed Lane. His throat had been slashed, which was David’s mark, but there were bruises under his eyes. He’d been punched silly before he died. And David didn’t have the stamina to do that: his fingers were too fine. Alyosha didn’t care whose mark it was. The Jokers commissioned him to paint Mousy on a wall. Alyosha stuck him next to Rooster. But he magnified the Mouse, multiplied him with his crayons and his brushes and his spray cans, drew him without much of a hump, because he wanted to give the Mouse all the perfection that befit a general. He worked half a day on the head alone, standing on his ladder like Michelangelo, his body half twisted so he could spray at the right angle.

  But some downtown hunter descended on the boy and tried to swipe him off his ladder. “Richardson, will you cut it out, man?” Alyosha said, whirling his arms blindly, like a little windmill. “I’m not in the mood.” But it wasn’t that bloodsucker. It was a chauffeur in a Manhattan limousine. And this chauffeur was no ordinary hack. He was carrying a Glock inside his coat. Alyosha wondered if he was with the FBI, or was just a professional kidnapper working for a jailhouse gang that wanted to take revenge on Paulito and the Jokers.

  “Fuck you,” Alyosha said, “your sister has a dick.”

  The chauffeur made a fist, and then Alyosha saw Marianna Storm inside the limousine, and he said, “All right, hold your horses, grandpa. I’m coming down.”

  But the chauffeur wouldn’t listen. He tossed Alyosha into the limo with Marianna Storm. “I hope you don’t mind,” she said. “I happened to be in the neighborhood, and Uncle Isaac asked me to collect you.”

  “Collect me for what?”

  “The Merliners. We’re meeting at my house.”

  “And you were out sightseeing on Featherbed Lane with the big barracuda, huh?”

  “Milton? He’s my bodyguard. But he shouldn’t have been rough with you, Mr. Alyosha.” And she turned to the chauffeur and lashed at him. “Milton, say you’re sorry … you shouldn’t have been so rough.”

  “Sorry, little mom,” the chauffeur mumbled.

  “Not to me, you numbskull. To Mr. Alyosha.”

  The chauffeur reached around to clasp Alyosha’s hand. “Sorry, sir.”

  “Well,” Marianna said, “we don’t have all day, Mr. Alyosha. Do you forgive him or not?”

  “Why do you need a bodyguard?”

  “That’s a silly question,” she said. “Look at me.”

  Alyosha saw a girl with long white stockings, a plaid skirt, and a silver medallion.

  “My mom’s rich,” she said. “I’m eminently kidnappable.”

  “They why’d you come to Joker country?”

  “Are you deaf, Mr. Alyosha?”

  “I’m Angel Carpenteros. The cops call me Alyosha.”

  “And so does Uncle Isaac. I came to collect you and have a quick look at your art.”

  “You can’t have a quick look,” Alyosha said. “It’s a war memorial.”

  “I know that,” said Marianna Storm, sitting back in her seat and signaling to her bodyguard, who brought Alyosha out of the Bronx in six and a half minutes and down to where all the rich barracudas lived on Sutton Place South … and followed him and her up to a penthouse apartment, with a terrace that wrapped around Manhattan. Alyosha could see all the bridges and gashes in the water that looked like screaming lines. Paulito was right to grab as many coca dollars as he could. Coca was the one Manhattan melody. And Paulito’s gang was getting slaughtered on the street because they couldn’t move coca around all by themselves and control the traffic without Paul. Wild men, like the Dominoes of Fort Tryon Park, were swooping down into the Bronx with all their brujas and their Santo Domingo shit and selling stuff right inside the schoolyards and making a fast million with all the lowlife peddlers, their little Dixie Cups. There was no point glocking a Dixie Cup, because new ones would jump out of the same box. And Alyosha was disheartened as hell until he saw the Big Jew munching potato chips inside the penthouse.

  All the Merliners assembled around him, uptown and downtown kids he was bringing together for his own Manhattan melody. And with him was his prize, Bernardo Dublin, who’d been one of the Jokers’ wise men … until he fell into Isaac’s arms. Bernardo was a half-breed, with an Irish dad, and the Irish had adopted him at Police Plaza. He was with Richardson right now, with all the other Apaches. It was Bernardo who’d glocked Rooster Ramirez with the Rooster’s own gun, caught him in the middle of a robbery, and pretended to be the angel of death. Alyosha hated Bernardo and owed him a lot. Because it wasn’t Richardson himself who’d gone into Spofford and got him out. Bernardo had swept through that children’s jail, battled with the guards, and grabbed Alyosha away from the warden without a writ.

  Bernardo Dublin was six feet tall, with red hair like the late Rooster Ramirez and a slightly darker mustache. He had the dimples of a choirboy. Sidel paraded him to all his subjects.

  “I had my religion,” Bernardo said. “The king boxed my ears back.”

  “Never laid a finger on you,” Isaac said, his mouth full of potato chips. “And I’m hardly a king, Bernardo.”


  “Boxed my ears with words. The mayor taught me how to read.”

  “That’s a lie. Encouraged you is all I ever did. And I didn’t have a mansion then. I was a policeman, wading in the muck … I’m not here to celebrate Bernardo, but to learn from him. We all can learn from Bernardo Dublin.”

  “Don’t listen to Isaac. I’m a ruffian out on the street. I work with young gangleaders. I reason with them, the way Isaac reasoned with me. I’m like a preacher.”

  Marianna Storm was already half in love with him, but the dimples and the red hair couldn’t fool Alyosha. Bernardo Dublin was a snake. It was Bernardo who did the Mouse, punched him, cut his throat, like a copycat. He stole from David Six Fingers, took David’s signature. He was always hiding behind somebody else’s mark.

  “I’m a convert,” Bernardo said, with the Merliners hovering close. “I couldn’t have gotten anywhere if Isaac hadn’t given me a reading list …”

  Alyosha broke away from the Merliners, sneaked downstairs, but there weren’t any gypsy cabs on Sutton Place South. He had to hike up to Harlem before he could find anyone who’d take him across the river into the Bronx.

  Marianna couldn’t make much sense of it. But a word kept galloping inside her head, Fantômas, Fantômas, as if Fantômas were a pony she was riding. She had a pony, Lord Charles, at her grandpappy’s ranch. But she imagined this horse in a mask. She blushed, because Bernardo was watching her. She liked him … and Alyosha, the boy who wanted to disappear inside his art. The painting had frightened her, because it revealed a rawness that could have rushed out of Marianna herself. Alyosha’s colors were like the different temperatures of a bleeding sun. And Bernardo was part of the colors. He could have walked out of Alyosha’s wall.

  But she would never have imagined Bernardo in a mask. And then Clarice stumbled home from one of her parties … and fell into Bernardo’s arms.

  “Bernardo, be a dear, and get me a drink.”

  “We don’t have alcoholic beverages,” Bernardo said. “This is a children’s reunion, Mrs. Storm. But I can make you a wicked Shirley Temple.”