The Garibaldis were having a personal war with the FBI, whose scarecrows and paid informers swarmed Amerigo’s streets, tapped his telephones, peeked in his window, dug wires into his walls, tried to flirt with the daughters of Mulberry grocers, bakers, and ravioli men.
Isaac took a second cab down to Grand Street. He visited the fruit stand of Murray Baldassare, across from Ferrara’s pastry house. Murray had been a marginal stoolpigeon, registered with the First Deputy’s office, until Isaac turned him over to Newgate. Now he was Newgate’s decoy, a fink for the FBI. Newgate financed Murray’s career as a fruitman, throwing four thousand dollars into the stand. Murray had no time for the fruit. Women from the neighborhood were fleecing him out of his bundles of tangerines. Murray was supposed to spy on Ferrara’s; Newgate had the notion that the dons of Grand Street conducted their business over Ferrara’s coffee mugs and trays of Sicilian pastry. There wasn’t a child in Little Italy over the age of six who didn’t know that Murray Baldassare was a fink. He stayed alive because he had nothing to feed Newgate. Amerigo himself ate Murray’s tangerines.
Murray recoiled at the image of Isaac shining through the tiny window of his stand. He developed hiccups that knocked underneath his lungs. Isaac had to drive a fist into Murray’s shoulder before the fruitman could get back his speech. The tangerines had a scarlet flush; their skins bled for Isaac. He swiped one from Murray’s window, its skin tearing under the force of Isaac’s yellow nail. The nectar inside was frozen to the strings that covered the fruit.
“Chief,” Murray said, “why come here? You want to see me dead?”
Isaac licked his fingers. “Relax, Murray. Amerigo knows you were married to me. He won’t hurt you.”
“It aint Amerigo. It’s the FBI’s. Newgate’ll cripple me. You think he’s stupid? He can figure for himself. The reports I’m shoving him are a bunch of crap. He’ll say me, you, and Amerigo are dancing on his head.”
“Didn’t I put you in business, Murray? Don’t complain. You’re a celebrity now. Nobody ever copped a fruit stand off the FBI’s before.”
“Isaac, I’m begging you, get me out of this.”
Isaac put the injured tangerine back in Murray’s window.
“Talk to me, Murray. You watch the street. Has Amerigo been hiring any goons lately?”
Murray’s eyes wandered from the ceiling to Isaac’s shoes. “I think so.”
“How many, Murray, how many has he hired?”
“Three or four.”
“Are they lollipops—kids? One of them a young girl? Did he send them to stomp on my mother?”
Quivers rose inside Murray’s cheeks that went beyond the possibility of a bluff. “Your mother, Isaac? … Newgate never told me. Who could do such a terrible thing?”
Isaac made the corner, with Murray caught behind his glass, tangerines up to his groin, his trunk twisted and inert, and his face turned mechanical: dim leering eyes in a nest of hollows. He was a discard, a spy that Isaac had manufactured, stroked, groomed, and shelved, and then fobbed off on the FBI.
The Chief was remorseful about Murray. But Newgate had hounded the First Dep for one of Isaac’s famous spies, and Murray was the spy Isaac could spare. He passed the social clubs of Mulberry Street, their windows shuttered with broad stripes of green paint, with the inevitable “MEMBERS ONLY” scratched into the green.
Isaac entered the Garibaldi club. The members glared at him, but no one threw him out. The Garibaldis endured his policeman’s smell, his blunt tie, his calfskin shoes, his orange socks, and the desecration of a pistol in their rooms. Most of them were men over sixty, snug in the thermal underwear exposed at their ankles and their wrists. They were drinking black coffee mixed with anisette, or cappuccinos from the Garibaldi’s big machine.
Growls escaped from Isaac’s stomach. He was addicted to coffee with steamed milk. He shunned the espresso joints of Bleecker and MacDougal, the Caffè Borgia, where they drowned your coffee in whipped cream, the Verdi, with its bits of chocolate in the foam, and the Reggio, which had a tolerable caffè moka, but little else. Isaac went to Vinnie’s luncheonette on Sullivan, where he could enjoy his cappuccinos in a simple glass, or Manganaro’s on Ninth Avenue, if he was in the mood to banter with the countermen, who begrudged pulling the handles of their espresso machine.
The aroma of coffee inside the Garibaldi club, thickened by the push of radiators, could drive a cop mad. The Garibaldis had the best cappuccinos in New York. You couldn’t attribute this to the wonders of a machine that produced sensational foam and squeezed boiling water through a bed of coffee grounds. It was the devotion of the Garibaldis themselves, who wouldn’t consider making cappuccinos for hire.
Amerigo Genussa sat among the Garibaldis in a stunning red shirt that was wide in the sleeves. A man no older than Isaac, with scars around the eyes from fights he’d had in the kitchens of Little Italy, he was concentrating on his game of dominoes.
Isaac resolved not to break the silence at the Garibaldi club. He would outlast dominoes, cappuccino mugs, Amerigo’s hatred for him. But the whistling heat off the radiators clung to Isaac, attacking the skin behind his ears. The redness of Amerigo’s shirt turned bitter in Isaac’s mouth, and he could taste the dry surface of the dominoes. “You want a coffee, Isaac?”
“No.”
Amerigo brought two mugs down from the shelves. Slyly, without a crease in his nostrils, Isaac watched the coffee-making. The machine shivered with a sucking noise as Amerigo steamed the milk. He cranked the lever, and coffee poured from two metal fangs.
“It hurts me to have a sullen man in my club. Stay out if you can’t smile.”
He pushed one of the mugs at Isaac. The Chief stared at the bubbles in the milk. “Bite my fist, landlord, but don’t you ever go near my mother again. I’ll kill you so slow, your brains will leak into your ear before you have the chance to die.”
“Isaac, I fuck you where you breathe. If I wanted your mother, I wouldn’t have messed up the job.”
The Garibaldis fingered their dominoes while Isaac and Amerigo grimaced at one another near the cappuccino mugs.
“Tell me you haven’t been hiring goons off the street.”
“Sure I’m hiring. You think your mother was the only casualty? The little bastards come into my precincts, slap Mrs. Pasquino over the head, demolish her bakery, and run home to Jewtown so they can eat their kosher baloney. Isaac, I’ll break their feet.”
“Amerigo, are you saying it’s a gang of rabbinical students? A Jewish karate club? Take a walk for yourself.”
“Two of them are Yids, definitely. A boy and a girl. The last one’s some kind of nigger. If he’s not a spade, then he’s a Turk or a Jap. Isaac, it’s gotta be.”
Isaac dug his jaw into the cappuccino mug. He licked the coffee, his throat purring at the taste of browned milk. “Amerigo, I’ll handle these lollipops. Call off your goons.”
“Impossible. Isaac, why argue? We’re both soldiers. You have your precincts, I have mine. How’s your daughter? Did she make a good marriage this time?”
“She’s okay,” Isaac said, with coffee in his teeth. “She has an architect.” Could he tell the landlord that Marilyn was running wild? That she was on the loose with lollipops stalking the streets?
“And your brother Leo, is he out of his troubles yet?”
“Leo’s doing fine.”
The coffee oozed through Isaac’s system, causing the skin on his knees to curl, and whishing into the pockets around his eyes. Isaac would have sold his daughter for a second cappuccino. The Garibaldis had him in their grip.
“Isaac, I hear your boyfriend has his own pillow at Headquarters. Now he doesn’t have to snore in the Commissioner’s lap.”
“Landlord, I can’t count all my boyfriends. Identify him for me.”
“Newgate.”
“Jesus,” Isaac said, coming out of his coffee lull. “How can Newgate hurt you? He’d drown in the puddles if the PC didn’t hold his hand.”
“Isaac, he gives me a bad name. He frightens young Italian mothers with his ugly eyes. The mothers say Newgate’s a witch. They could have deformed babies, and I’ll get the blame. What’s he got against the Italian race? Does he think Sicily was the devil’s country? Half my buildings have busted toilets. I’m swimming in shit with my plumber’s boots, and that schmuck talks about organized crime?”
“Complain to Cowboy, not me. Cowboy’s the one who loves the FBI’s.” Isaac sucked at the bottom of the mug with the spaces between his teeth. “Amerigo, keep your goons on your side of the Bowery. If I catch them near Essex Street, they won’t be in any condition to search for lollipops.”
He got up without fantasies of destruction in his head. He wouldn’t spit on dominoes, smash the espresso machine, bring the Garibaldis to Headquarters. He had no grudge against Amerigo Genussa. He walked around the tables and landed in the street.
5.
MARILYN didn’t mourn her penniless state. Shuffling from Bellevue to Coen’s to the Crosby Street jail, she narrowed her problems down to the question of logistics: how could she avoid her father on her father’s turf? She sat in Bellevue with her Jewish grandmother, surrounded by bottles and tubes that could draw the wastes out of Sophie and drip vital sugars into her body. Sophie’s bruises had turned yellowish. The coma she was in wasn’t absolute. She would come out of her sleep to frown at the pipes in her nose and signal to Marilyn with her dry tongue. Marilyn couldn’t gauge the extent of Sophie’s recognition. Was Sophie calling for a nurse or mouthing “Kathleen,” the name of Marilyn’s mother?
“I’m with you, grandma Sophie. Kathleen’s daughter. Your grandchild Marilyn.”
She escaped the stare of interns and orderlies on the prowl. Isaac could be behind the door. He had a whole catalogue of spies to trap her with; men in hospital coats, detectives wearing powder and a false moustache, who would point a finger at Isaac’s skinny daughter and cluck for the Chief. She saw this type of man scrounging on Crosby Street. She was carrying cookies for uncle Leo that she made with flour from Coen’s single pantry shelf. The man had pieces of charcoal around his lips. He tried to mimic the auras of a bum. He blew on his knuckles, tore at the threads of his coat, bit hairs off his wrinkled scarf. Marilyn laughed at the flaws in his disguise. The cop had protected feet: only a police bum would walk around in Florsheim shoes.
A crease near the eyes disturbed Marilyn. “Brian Connell,” she said without embanassment She knew him from Echo Park, and her junior-high-school days. She’d had several “sweethearts.” Brian was one of them.
“Mary?” he said. He couldn’t understand how a girlie could pinpoint him under a coat, a hairy scarf, and a blackened face.
“I’m Marilyn. Marilyn Sidel.”
The cop blew on his knuckles again. He had gorgeous teeth. Memories of Marilyn ruined his charcoal complexion. His cheeks burned with color as he recollected a bony girl with big tits.
“Marilyn, it’s insane I should meet you at the bottom of Manhattan. I’m with the anti-crime boys. I work out of Elizabeth Street The bosses are sitting on our heads. They’ll murder us if we can’t produce the mutts that hit your grandmother. That’s why I’m in my Bowery clothes.”
Marilyn felt silly shaking the paw of an old, old boyfriend, someone who’d licked her flesh eleven years ago. Brian had never been shy with her; now he rocked on his Florsheims, knuckles in his mouth. He’s afraid of my father, Marilyn guessed. She showed him the cookies. “I have to deliver them to my uncle. See you around, Brian. Goodbye.”
Brian moved his jaw in a cunning way. He wouldn’t release Marilyn’s hand. He had to bend one knee to hide his erection from her.
“Marilyn, don’t be brief. We could divide Marble Hill and the North Bronx between ourselves. We share the same freaky past. Have a beer with me.”
Brian contemplated a quick romance. If he could get close to Marilyn, blow on her nipples until she was crazy about him, he would have an opening to Isaac. Brian needed a big Jew. (None of the Irish rabbis at Headquarters had picked him up.) Isaac was the First Deputy’s whip and high chief of all the rabbis, white, black, and Puerto Rican. Brian couldn’t fail once he had Isaac for a “father-in-law.” So he escorted Marilyn to a bar on Spring Street, fondling his visions of a detective’s shield.
The barkeep winked at Marilyn, and stuck a bottle of gin in Brian’s arm. Cradling the bottle, Brian waltzed around the bar stools in his floppy coat He had to gesture three times with his long neck before Marilyn would follow him into the back room. “I thought we were drinking beer,” she said. The door clicked shut behind her.
“Brian, this is a real Bronx reunion. You haven’t changed any of your tricks.”
“It’s damp at the bar. In here we can have some quiet.” Brian was in a quandary: should he make her first, or squeeze promises out of her to whisper his name and badge number in Isaac’s ear? “Marilyn, tell me about your family.”
“What’s there to tell? I’m a victim of combat fatigue. I’ve been through three husbands. Brian, how many wives do you have?”
Mother of Mercy, she’s still a fucking tramp, Brian sang to himself. He made no attempt now to hide his erection.
“I’m single, Marilyn, I swear. Which husband did you like best?”
Marilyn had to lie. “I can’t remember.” She wouldn’t tell him about the husband she adored, her first one, Larry, a blond boy with a lisp, whom she brutalized with her affectionate rages and jealousies. Reared by Kathleen, the real estate goddess, and Isaac the Pure, she’d been much too tough for a blond boy. The beautiful Larry ran away. Coen, the blue-eyed orphan, could remind her of him.
Brian sucked on his bottle with an angel’s smile. He was thinking of gangbangs in cellars, weightlifting rooms, and the woods of Isham Park, with Marilyn satisfying each and every star of the Inwood Hill Athletic Club, her lean body trembling under the impact of Brian and his friends, who could assuage their dread of purgatory with the knowledge that Marilyn wasn’t wholly Irish. The boys interpreted her willingness to undress as a spiteful Jewish streak.
Brian rinsed his tongue in sweet alcohol. His smile turned sullen, giving his teeth a wolfish edge. Marilyn’s three husbands enraged him. Whore, bitch, he babbled in his head, she’s always going down for bunches of three. He poked a finger into Marilyn’s blouse. The finger stood on her collarbone. Brian didn’t know where to explore. His brains were swollen with gin.
Marilyn removed the finger from her chest without cursing Brian. She wasn’t mean. She bad cookies to deliver. She saw Brian’s cheeks explode. The gin was in her face. The blouse came off her shoulders in one hard rip. Brian’s knuckles mashed against her cheekbone. She had little mousies under her eye. She wanted to vomit blood. Brian stooped with his thumbs in her hips, and Marilyn’s skirt fell under her knees. The cloth around her ankles prevented her from kicking him. She made feeble shoves with her elbows. Brian knocked her to the floor.
He was struggling with Marilyn of Isham Park. He could eclipse husbands, wedding bands, and marriage beds with the mesh pants he took from her and rubbed in his fist She was Brian’s whore child. Isaac didn’t exist. The split of her bosoms, the trembling line of her ribs, the rise and fall of her complicated navel, proved to him she was a creature of the cellars, someone with tainted blood and a vague history. He pushed her knees apart and dug with his hand. He tolerated scratching elbows and the mischief of a whore’s fingernails. He kept his knuckles in Marilyn’s eye. He snapped her head back with a tug of her scalp. He punched her until she grew quiet.
Marilyn tried to think of Larry. But she started to cry. So she thought of Coen. She imagined the shape of his neck, the aroma of talcum powder on Amsterdam Avenue, the feel of Coen’s blond knee, and the pressure that knifed down from her bosoms to her shanks eased a bit. Brian figured she had to be crazy when he heard her mumble “Blue Eyes.”
His partners caught him reciting Hail Marys behind a pile of beards. They dragged him out of the property closet, glowering
at the scratches on his face. These were the anti-crime boys, and they couldn’t afford to have their reputation besmirched by a religious freak. The house bulls would laugh at them. Their own sergeant would pass them off as imbeciles. They were sworn to find the lollipop gang, to impress Headquarters with their ability to work undercover and wear a sensational disguise. “Brian, wake up.”
He clasped his partners’ knees and cried into their trouser cuffs. “Isaac is gonna kill me.”
“Brian, what would big Isaac want with you?”
“I fucked his daughter,” Brian said.
They smiled and looked at Brian with new respect.
“She’s a bimbo who collects wedding rings. I had to beat her up.”
His partners were horrified. They shook Brian off their cuffs. Big Isaac could reach into any precinct and squash a cop in bum’s clothes. But if Isaac found Brian Connell, he might sink all of them. “Get back into the closet,” they said.
Brian crawled on his belly like a snake in a wool stocking. Loose hair from a moustache on the shelf drifted down to him, and Brian had to sneeze. It was nasty in the dark. He promised the Holy Mother two consecutive novenas if She would make Isaac disappear. The closet opened. He could see into his partners’ mouths. “It’s only Blue Eyes,” they said.
They hauled him out again, tickling him under his holster. Brian guffawed. “Isaac’s afraid of us. He sends his rat to meet with me. I’ll bury Coen. Just watch.”
Coen had baffled the anti-crime boys. He came to their precinct with stubble on his chin. They remembered him in herringbone; Isaac loved to groom the First Deputy’s spies. His squad of manicured detectives had become a legend in Manhattan stationhouses, where a cop learned to distrust any sweet-looking boy without a little dirt under his nails. But Coen was in a lumber jacket and pants that were as grubby as Brian’s. The anti-crime boys hunched near the walls so that Coen could have a direct path to Brian in their locker room.
Marilyn the Wild Page 4