Now he was calling for Brodsky again. Isaac wanted the morgue at Bellevue. The rubber-gun squad crammed his raincoat with a fresh supply of pencils (the Chief liked to scribble on his rides with Brodsky). The chauffeur had a glum look. He preferred to keep away from hospitals and morgues. Isaac wasn’t trying to push Brodsky towards a ghoulish medical examiner. The Chief was after Esther’s body. The Spagnuolos had left her in a city icebox, unclaimed. If the Hands of Esau refused to bury a Jewish lollipop on society grounds (Barney Rosenblatt had the power to stall Isaac’s request), he would fish for a grave out of his own pocket, a grave with a legitimate marker.
The morgue attendant was coy with Isaac. He swore on his life that Esther had disappeared. “Isaac, you have the authority. Tear down the walls. The coroner’s afraid of the First Dep. But you won’t find shit. The girl was picked up.”
“Did they row her out to Ward’s Island on the paupers’ run?”
The thought of Esther being dumped in a potter’s field maddened Isaac. It was gruesome to him. A grave would be turned out every ten or twenty years to accommodate a different crop of bones.
The attendant smiled. “Isaac, it wasn’t Ward’s Island. Somebody signed for her.”
“Show me the release, you scumbag.”
The attendant returned with a long card.
“Was it a relative?” Isaac muttered.
“No, it says ‘admirer.’”
“What’s the admirer’s name? … could it be Rupert?”
The attendant squinted at the card. “Isaac, it aint so clear. One word. It begins with a Z.”
“Zorro,” Brodsky said, with sudden illumination, his chin in the attendant’s shoulder.
The attendant curled his eyes. “Isaac, you can’t trick the morgue. Who’s Zorro?”
“One of the Guzmann boys.” The cemetery was in Bronxville, where the Guzmanns had a family plot. Checking with another attendant, Isaac discovered that Zorro Guzmann had snatched Esther’s body only two hours ago. He rushed out of the morgue.
Brodsky fumbled behind the Chief. “Isaac, it makes no sense. What could the Guzmanns do with a lollipop? Are they planning to revive her? Will they sell her in the street?”
A tribe of Marranos from Peru, pickpockets, thieves, and pimps, the Guzmanns had settled in the Bronx, becoming the policy bankers of Boston Road; they thrived amid Latinos, poor Irishers, blacks, and ancient Jews. Isaac hadn’t concerned himself with their penny plays. But the tribe was beginning to infest Manhattan. The Guzmanns would kidnap young girls from the Port Authority and auction them to local whorehouses. Isaac meant to squeeze the tribe out of his borough. The lollipops were slowing him down. He could no longer concentrate on grubby pimps.
The chauffeur took him to Bronxville. The Guzmann burial ground was a hummock of frozen grass. Three old men stood shivering over a fresh scar in the hummock. They were expert mourners. The Guzmanns had hired them to wail for Esther. They wore the caftans of a chief rabbi, only each of them came with a pectoral cross. Zorro was with them, in a checkered overcoat. Brodsky nudged the Chief with a loud cackle. “Isaac, should I throw him down the hill? Let these old men mourn for Zorro while they’re here. One tap on the head, and you can close the Guzmann case. Zorro won’t have a brain left.”
Isaac pointed to a man on the other side of the hummock, a man without Zorro’s penchant for clothes; he had earmuffs from a Bronx variety store, a scarf as mottled as a hankie, a thickness of sweaters, overalls that ballooned in the seat and stopped just below the calf, galoshes that wouldn’t buckle. His nostrils were flat, and he had a forehead that was uncommonly wide.
“Do me a favor, Brodsky. Whisper your threats from now on. That’s Jorge over there. Zorro’s big brother. Bullets can’t touch him. He has elephant skin. He’ll shovel dirt in our eyes if we move on Zorro. So be nice.”
Isaac walked up to Zorro Guzmann (César was his baptismal name) without a hand in his pocket, so Jorge wouldn’t misinterpret Isaac’s peaceful signs and come galloping down the hummock with squeaky galoshes and his earmuffs askew. Zorro had mud on his pigskin shoes. His coat of many colors turned orange in the afternoon. Isaac tried not to stare at Zorro’s dainty feet.
“Zorro, since when does Papa interest himself in the affairs of a Yeshiva girl? Brooklyn isn’t your borough.”
“Isaac, you calling my father illiterate? He reads the Daily News. The girl’s a Ladina, isn’t she? You think my father’s going to allow her to sleep in an unholy grave? Not when she’s a Spanish Jew. You see those criers on the hill? The holy men. They’ve been cursing Esther’s mother and father since two o’clock.”
“That’s a touching story, but are you sure Papa isn’t sanctifying Esther because she tried to murder me?”
“Isaac, don’t blaspheme in a graveyard. My father’s a religious man. He doesn’t care if you live or die.”
“Good for him. Zorro, I respect your family. I never interfered with Guzmann business on Boston Road. So take the wax out of your ear. Manhattan’s not for you. The cockroaches have a nasty sting.”
“Isaac, I can’t even spell Manhattan. Why would I go there to live?”
Isaac was finished with obligatory advice. He had plans to shred Zorro’s spectacular coat He would push the Guzmanns into a sewer once he caught those fish in Manhattan.
“César, aren’t you going to ask me about Blue Eyes?”
Zorro dug the earth with the pigskin on his feet “Don’t say blue. Blue is a filthy color in my religion. Isaac, teach yourself some history. All the magistrates used to wear blue cloaks in Portugal and Spain six hundred years ago. Can’t you figure? A dark color could prevent the stink of a Jew from poisoning their armpits.”
“Did your father tell you that?”
“No, I learnt it from my brothers.”
Zorro’s four brothers, Alejandro, Topal, Jorge, and Jerónimo, were Bronx wisemen who couldn’t read the letters off a street sign, or manage the intricacies of a revolving door. Jerónimo, the oldest, slept in a crib.
“César, you still haven’t asked me about Coen?”
“There’s nothing to ask. Manfred flew from Papa’s candy store. He made his nest with you.”
Coen had been raised on Boston Road, where Papa Guzmann maintained his empire under the cover of egg creams and soft candy. It was Papa who shoved Coen’s parents towards suicide, controlling them with little gifts of money until the miserable egg store they had came into Papa’s hands.
Zorro edged away from Isaac. He was in Bronxville at his father’s bidding, to put an unwanted Ladina under frozen grass, with three Christian rabbis in attendance, hovering over the Guzmanns’ sacred mound. “Isaac, this is a funeral. I can’t talk no more.”
Isaac trudged with Brodsky down from the cemetery. The chauffeur spied at Jorge Guzmann from the corner of his sleeve; he was baffled that a moron with open galoshes could frighten the Chief.
“Please, Isaac, lemme pop this Jorge once behind the ear. We’ll see what flows out, water, piss, or blood.”
The Chief closed Brodsky’s face with a horrible scowl. He wasn’t looking for company. He sat at the back of the car. He could have taken off Brodsky’s lip with the heat spilling from both his eyes. “Esther,” he muttered. He was sick of a world of lollipops.
11.
A GIRL could go crazy smelling pot cheese in her father’s refrigerator. Stuck between Isaac and his “fiancée,” Marilyn fell to brooding over the conditions of her past and present life: Sarah Lawrence, three husbands, pot cheese, and Rivington Street in seven years. She had to get free of blintzes and Ida Stutz. Marilyn needed Blue Eyes, but her father had stolen him away. She put on her winter coat, locked Isaac’s door, and went into the street. There was no escaping Isaac. They nodded to her at the matzoh factory, at the appetizing store with prunes in the window, at the Hungarian bakery with its crusts of dark bread that could cure widows and divorcées of constipation, boils, or the gout.
“Hello, Miss Sidel. Tell me, how’s the
Chief today? Honey, don’t be bashful. Take a piece of strudel for your father and yourself. Please. Why shove a pocketbook in my face? It’s too early in the morning to cash a ten-dollar bill.”
The whole fucking East Side was her father’s house. She had to shop in Little Italy if she wanted to stay alive. In her father’s territories no one would allow her to pay for her goods. A block from Rivington Street she was loaded down with packages. She had strudel, whole wheat matzohs, salt sticks, and pumpkin seeds. She walked to Bummy’s on East Broadway, where she could get some relief from Isaac’s worshipers. At Bummy’s her father was despised.
Marilyn ordered a whiskey sour with two stabs of lemon and a lick of salt. She knew about the old crook that worked in Bummy’s kitchen, one-eyed Gulavitch, maimed by her father. Isaac had poked his knuckles in Gula’s eye. She wondered if the old crook might revenge himself on her. But she couldn’t see into the kitchen.
Bummy Gilman came over to her stool. He was perturbed about having a skinny girl with tits in his bar. A cunt like Marilyn could bring trouble to him. Isaac was capable of wrecking any bar.
“Bummy, don’t frown,” she said. “I’m not Isaac’s messenger. I didn’t come with greetings from him.”
“Marilyn, who’s calling you a stoolpigeon? Not me.” He shouted to the barman. “George, this lady needs more ice in her glass.”
The barman arrived with a cylinder of ice. Then he withdrew to his station, fingering the buttons on his red jacket Bummy left Marilyn to whisper in the barman’s ear. “George, keep her busy. If she asks for apple pie, give it to her.”
The barman licked his teeth. “God, would I love to get into that.”
“Forget it, George. She’s poison. Her father has terrific hands. He could pull your nose off with half a finger. She’s a dragon lady. I wouldn’t lie.”
Bummy strolled into his kitchen, searching for Gula One Eye. Gula was crouching over the potato bin. He could flick warts off a potato faster than a Marrano pickpocket from the Bronx could reach inside your pants. “Gula,” Bummy said with a cackle. “Would you like to get laid?”
“Bummy, you shouldn’t joke,” Gulavitch said, climbing off the bin.
“Sweetheart, you know who’s sitting out there with her legs crossed? Isaac’s daughter. She’s itching for you.”
“Let her itch.”
“At least make her a present. You lost an eye. Get it back from her.”
“That’s no good,” Gulavitch said. “What’s she done? I’ll pay Isaac, not the girl.”
Bummy couldn’t argue with a feeble-minded crook He returned to George. His head was boiling with images of Isaac. The Chief owned East Broadway. Bummy had to dance with the big Jewish bear at Headquarters, curtsy to Isaac, or move his bar to Brooklyn. He was sick of it “George, you got the green light The dragon lady’s all yours. Take her. I don’t care. But watch yourself. She bruises. If Isaac ever catches your thumb marks on her skin, you’re a dead man.”
George stroked one of his red cuffs. “Bummy, leave it to me.”
Bummy sat down near his register, fingering yesterday’s receipts, as he watched the barman sweet-talk Marilyn the Wild. He had to marvel at George’s abilities. The barman waltzed with his thumbs on Marilyn’s ass before Bummy could finish the receipts. There was a little arena behind the bar where Bummy staged dog fights for special customers, or an occasional burlesque show (the girls who took off their clothes at Bummy’s place were borrowed from Zorro Guzmann). The arena became a dance floor whenever Bummy was short of bulldogs and Zorro’s girls.
Marilyn went into the arena with George. She couldn’t get by on whiskey sours and salt under her lip. She needed some sweat and male companionship to ease her off Rivington Street and the color of Coen’s eyes. She wasn’t solemn about a cock in the furls of her groin. She knew what it meant to dance with George. She didn’t intercept the track of his wrist. George liked to cuddle with a finger in her underpants, and Sinatra on Bummy’s phonograph machine. “Baby,” he said, “come home with me.”
Silences couldn’t discourage him. George was a patient barman. He ran for Bummy’s keys. “Bummy, it’s open house. I can tell.” His hands were trembling. “I swear, she’s three yards wide.”
Bummy gave him the keys to the bedroom he maintained over the bar. It was a retreat for his customers, who could romance one of Zorro’s burlesque queens without having to abandon East Broadway. George led Marilyn through the kitchen, where she could peek at Gula and his potato bin (the bin had deep sides, and was very, very dark), and marched her up Bummy’s private staircase. He undressed her, with the keys in the door, piling her skirt and blouse on a chair. He was much more fastidious about his own red jacket, which he refused to stick on a hanger in Bummy’s closet until both shoulders were aligned. He wore garters around his knees, and a truss to keep his hernia in place. George had no pubic hair. Marilyn saw a lump, shaped like a pea, at the top of George’s thigh, when the truss came off. He kissed her with his garters on. His plucked crotch had an itchy feel. He pushed her down into Bummy’s queen-sized bed, the hernia traveling along the wedges in his thigh.
Marilyn wasn’t spooked by a pea sliding under some skin. A man with a hernia might have made her into a passionate girl, only George was too gruff. He climbed on Marilyn, with his garters scratching her legs, and forced his way in. She didn’t complain. She hadn’t come to Bummy’s for a tea party. She had whiskey in her lungs. She endured the rub of garters, and George’s mean little plunges. She couldn’t even hold him by the ears to catch a piece of his rhythm. He wouldn’t lower his head. His orgasm was like a snarl. He climbed off Marilyn, hitched up the belts of his truss, and brought his jacket out of the closet. “I’m in a rush,” he said. “Bummy needs me … he gets lonely when I’m away from the bar.”
Marilyn stayed in bed. She didn’t want to creep downstairs too soon and suck on a maraschino cherry. Whiskey sours would turn her against Coen. She fought her bitterness by grabbing Bummy’s lavender sheets. Jesus, Joseph, and Mary, if Blue Eyes wouldn’t come inside her, she could always look for George.
She got dressed finally, retrieving her stuff from the chair. She couldn’t find a washcloth in Bummy’s room, so she walked out with milk on her thigh. “Being a spinster isn’t so bad. I’ll survive without Manfred Coen.” She wasn’t nervous about the kitchen. Gulavitch could have her neck to play with. She’d help him drive his thumbs into her windpipe. Gula called her over to the bin. “Missy, I got a potato face for you.”
He’d carved a warty potato with his nails. The face had nostrils, ears, lips, and a pair of warts for eyes. Gula made a sloping chin, and the depressions of a widow’s peak, giving the potato the twisted features of a penitent Marilyn wasn’t put off by somber details. The potato was a kindness to her. She had a fit of blubbering, ravaged by the markings on a lopsided face. The gift had an urgency no husband could bring. Gula must have seen the mad streak in her when she crossed the kitchen with George. Was he telling her with the potato, Missy, you aint alone? She could have screamed, “Blue balls and father shit,” into Gula’s chest without feeling ashamed. He drew a rag out of his sleeve for Marilyn. She wiped her eyes with it.
“Don’t sit at the bar. Bummy’s a cocksucker. Nobody loves you here. Tell your father Gula One Eye fucks him in the nose.”
“I will, Mr. Gulavitch. I promise.”
And she sailed out of the kitchen with the rag in her fist, passing Bummy, who mocked the ratty glide of her skirt, and George, who cursed her for inflaming the lump in his groin. Marilyn didn’t care. She grabbed her packages off the stool, the matzohs and the pumpkin seeds, and left East Broadway.
12.
RUPERT clawed Esther’s furniture and artifacts, a broken chair, a pincushion used by Spagnuolo seamstresses, ribbons from her Yeshiva days, tampons in a candy box, pieces of colored chalk, assorted chemicals, and a crusted pot, all the worldly goods she had brought with her to the tenement on Suffolk Street, Esther’s last address. Rupert was
hungry to curse her. His fingers mauled the pincushion. The ribbons disintegrated after a few pulls. The chalk bled green and yellow against his palms. He couldn’t say the word “bitch.”
Why had he been so dumb about the ingredients in Esther’s pot? She must have stolen a recipe from The Anarchist Cookbook. Stinky Rupert forgot how to smell a bomb. Did Esther invent a woolly fuse? Ignite her jars with Tampax? Or did Isaac nab her at the door, bite her tits, throw her in a room, and supply the match? Such sequences weren’t Rupert’s concern. However Esther died, he would pinch Isaac soon as he could.
It was the Chinese New Year, the Year of the Swan, and Rupert had a prior commitment. He intended to free Stanley Chin. With Esther thick in his skull, a hard, bitter longing that nudged him with mad ideas (was it kosher to fuck a dead girl?), shaking him with impressions of her, mind and body, that could unhinge him any minute, he planned his attack on St. Bartholomew’s. He would tear out the throats of detectives and nurses who got in his way. He would take the prisoner on a piggyback ride, ferry him to Chinatown (Rupert could wink across a river), so Stanley could celebrate the New Year in a Chinese café.
Rupert first met him at Seward Park, where they were freshmen together. Stanley was a muscle boy, a bill collector for Chinese merchants and landlords, and a bodyguard belonging to the Pell Street Republican Club. It was the futility of Republicans in Chinatown that impressed Rupert: Stanley Chin always picked the losing side. He was a boy from Hong Kong, in love with barbells, American cigarettes, and Bruce Lee. He could crumble bricks with his teeth, kick through a wall, smash the legs of a table, until the Snapping Dragons of Pell Street, Stanley’s old gang, sent him to St. Bartholomew’s with crippled fingers and toes. Rupert felt responsible; he had drawn Stanley out of Chinatown, recruited him to his own brittle cause, the dismantling of Isaac, and introduced him to Esther Rose.
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