“Wads, the Guzmanns are creepy pimps. If they touch you, I’ll stick their balls in a medical jar.” Wadsworth didn’t smile. “You have a big family, Wads. A boy with uncles and cousins living in city dormitories shouldn’t be so particular. Get what I mean? You can float out of my house, Wads, that’s your privilege. But if Cowboy finds out you’re no longer registered to me, hell take away your seat at the movies.”
“Isaac, the Guzmanns are angels next to you.”
“I agree. The Guzmanns wrap their money in prayer shawls, but can they keep you out of the Tombs? I’m your friend, not Zorro. Remember that Now give. What’s the name of that whore market?”
“Zuckerdorff. It’s an outlet for diseased merchandise. Seconds and thirds. Zorro rents the showroom every week.”
“A dummy corporation, is that it?”
“No. You can get a blouse for one of your girlfriends from Zuckerdorff. Isaac, be careful with the old man. He’s Zorro’s great-uncle.”
Brodsky drove the Chief to “Zuckerdorff’s of Sixth Avenue,” which was in the basement of a pajama factory on Fortieth Street, between Tenth and Eleventh. Zuckerdorff had no secretaries or shipping clerks. He was a man with handsome eyebrows and prominent bones in his skull. He must have been eighty years old. Isaac had to extricate him from a wall of haberdashery boxes. Zuckerdorff didn’t take kindly to this intrusion. “Gentlemen, do you have a piece of paper from a judge? Otherwise leave me alone.”
The Chief wouldn’t go for his inspector’s badge, so Brodsky had to pull out his own gold shield. Zuckerdorff laughed in the chauffeur’s face. “Mister, I seen plenty of those. They’re good for scaring the cucarachas.”
“Isaac, should I bend his mouth?”
The Chief stepped around Brodsky to catch Zorro’s great-uncle at a sharper angle. Plaguing an old man with bluish skin on his temples made Isaac bitter with himself. But he couldn’t allow a tribe of Bronx pimps to laugh him out of his borough. “Zuckerdorff, if you’re counting on Zorro, forget it. I eat Guzmanns in the morning. They’re tastier than frogs’ legs. So consider what I have to say. Either you shut Zorro out of your company, and forbid him to walk his whores through these premises, or you’ll have to stack your boxes in the street. I can turn you into a sidewalk corporation faster than Zorro can pedicure his father’s toenails.”
Zuckerdorff hopped to the telephone. He dialed without looking back at Isaac. His conversation was quite brief. “Zelmo, this is Tomás … I have two faigels in my office … funny boys … cops with bright ideas … they like to threaten people.”
Zuckerdorff tittered with a finger on his lip. The bones shook in his skull. “My friends, you’d better vacate the building. Because your badges are going to be in my toilet bowl in another minute. If you decide to wait, I can fix you some beautiful red tea.”
Isaac wondered if the Marranos poured jam or blood in their teacups. He was more curious about this than the identity of Zuckerdorff’s benefactor.
A man clumped into the basement He must have thick soles, Isaac assumed. “What precinct are you from?” the man growled, without seeing Isaac. “Are you grabbing for the nearest pocket? I’ll break your knuckles off.”
Isaac recognized Zelmo Beard, a disheveled detective from the safe and loft squad. Zelmo stared into Isaac’s eyes. His chin collapsed His ears seemed to crawl into his neck He waltzed in his baggy overcoat, toppling the wall of haberdashery boxes. Zuckerdorff had all the omens a seller of damaged blouses could need. He blinked at Isaac. This cop had a capacity for pure evil. How else could Zuckerdorff explain the explosion of blush marks on Zelmo Beard?
Zelmo began to genuflect near Isaac’s thighs. “Chief, I didn’t know the First Dep was interested in Zuckerdorff … he takes in pennies, I swear. Garbage deals. He’s a glorified junkman.”
“Zelmo, I thought you had more sense. Why are you out muscling for a family that’s been a nuisance to my life?”
“Isaac, I couldn’t give a shit about Zorro.”
“Prove it. I don’t want him finding any more outlets for his little girls. Wherever Zorro turns, you chase him, Zelmo, understand? You can start with Zuckerdorff. Hit him with summonses, sprinkler violations, the works. That way Zorro will know I’m sending him my regards. Brodsky, come on.”
The chauffeur basked on Tenth Avenue. His boss had to be the greatest detective in the world; better than Maigret, better than the Thin Man, better than Cowboy Rosenblatt. Isaac the Just could destroy the Guzmanns and all their Manhattan links without raising his thumb. He carried honey and acid inside his mouth. He could bite your face, or purr you to sleep. “Isaac, the reporters, Isaac. You’ll snow them out of their pants. Should I signal Headquarters?”
“Brodsky, we’re going to Bellevue.”
The sedan pushed east, Brodsky sulking behind the wheel. He hated hospitals with fat chimneys and raw brick. Isaac went up to his mother’s room. He found his nephews in the hall, Davey and Michael. The boys wore their hunting clothes: Edwardian suits cut to the measurements of a child, stiff collars, and identical flame red ties. “Uncle Isaac, uncle Isaac,” they screamed, lunging at him. Isaac had to bribe his nephews with fifty-cent pieces before they would give up their hold on his knees. The hallway would soon be a battlefield. The boys were waiting to pounce on their father. Where was Leo’s ex-wife? Davey and Michael couldn’t have plunked themselves outside their grandmother’s door.
“My father’s a killer man,” Michael said.
“Who’s he been killing?”
“My mother and me.”
Isaac couldn’t argue with a seven-year-old. He abandoned his nephews for a peek at his mother. Sophie had her vigilers: Marilyn, Leo, and Alfred Abdullah, her suitor from Pacific Street. Abdullah greeted Isaac with a sorrowful smile. An American Arab out of Lebanon, he could grieve over Sophie’s wounds as hard as any son. Isaac nodded to the chairs around the bed. His mother lay in her pillows with blue salt on her lips, fluids leaking in and out of a nest of pipes. Marilyn barked a husky hello. Isaac felt uncomfortable with his daughter in the room. He saw the strain, the nervous flutter of her eyelids. She was miserable without Coen. And Isaac had contributed to this. Blue Eyes was only two flights away, in the prisoners’ ward, minding Stanley Chin. Marilyn couldn’t get through; the prisoners’ ward didn’t entertain the guests of jailors, nurses, or cops.
Leo could feel the chill between father and daughter. He edged closer to Marilyn’s chair. Marilyn was his buffer zone. He remembered Isaac’s promise to tear off a lung if he refused to give up his hiding place in civil jail. Leo hadn’t made preparations to leave Crosby Street. The climate suited him. He could smoke, play cards, sneak out to visit his mother. Sitting next to Marilyn, he waited for Isaac’s wrath to fall. He’d misinterpreted the Chief. Isaac was too occupied with Rupert, Esther, and the Guzmanns to worry about one of his own simple threats. Leo’s tenure at Crosby Street didn’t concern him now. Abstracted, with leaking pipes in his eye, he spoke to Alfred Abdullah. “How’s Pacific Street?”
Abdullah stared past Isaac in alarm: Sophie’s head came off the pillows. “The baby,” she said. “Bring me the baby.” Sleeping, she had the look of a woman whose skin was on fire, her face deepening with blue salt and the passage of blood. Coming out of a coma, her complexion changed. She was pale, with a mouse’s color, during her periods of lucidity. The glass pipes swayed over her arm, impeding the flow from gooseneck to gooseneck. “Bring me the baby,” she said.
Isaac stood with both fists in his chest. Abdullah made little grabs at his throat. Leo covered his eyes. Only Marilyn had the sense to clutch the pipes and narrow their sway. “Jesus Christ,” she said. “Can’t you see? Mama’s calling for Leo.”
Leo sprang out of his chair. His shoulder landed in the bed. Sophie began to caress his bald spot. Leo was crying with his mother’s fingers in his scalp. “Shhh,” she said. “Where’s the Philistine?”
Abdullah crouched behind Leo. Sophie rejected him. “Not you,” she said. “Where�
�s the philistine? …”
“Mama,” Isaac said, his ankles sinking under him. “I’m right here.”
“Did you meet the cock-a-doodle?”
Isaac shrugged, rendered incomplete by his mother.
“The cock-a-doodle,” Sophie insisted. “In Paris, France.”
Isaac was caught with pimples on his tongue. Leo must have snitched; mama couldn’t have known about his rendezvous with Joel in the Jewish slums of Paris, unless the fluids dripping into her also fed her intuition.
Sophie was through with bald spots. She reached for Abdullah’s hand. Leo wouldn’t move; he kept his ear against Sophie’s hospital shirt Sophie smiled.
“Alfred, are you making a living?”
Abdullah answered yes.
“Good. Because I aint putting out for paupers.”
Devoted to her, Abdullah didn’t reveal his embarrassment. Leo drew his ear away from the bed. “Mama’s getting delirious,” he whispered into Marilyn’s shoulder.
“Isaac, are you fucking lately?”
“Mama, who has the time.”
Leo twisted Isaac’s sleeve. “Don’t answer her … Isaac, her brain is swelling up. Do you know what it means to be without a husband thirty years?”
Sophie dropped into the pillows. Her mouth twitched once. Her eyes registered a certain confusion. She tasted the salt on her lip. She belched. She tumbled into a profound sleep, holding Abdullah’s hand. Leo crept out of the room.
Trapped between Abdullah and Marilyn, Isaac grew shy. He couldn’t belittle Sophie’s quest for boyfriends, in and out of her comas. No sugar leak could kill his mother’s sexuality. Her skin was turning deep again. Isaac was left with his daughter. He heard bitter screams from the hall.
Leo was wrestling with his ex-wife. The elusive Selma lay under his knees, breathing sporadically, with Davey and Michael climbing up their father’s back. “Let me finish her once and for all,” Leo choked out, his voice edged with a violence Isaac had never encountered in his brother. Leo wouldn’t acknowledge Michael’s clawing fingernails. Davey was sitting on his neck. Leo had his knuckles in Selma’s windpipe. “Do I have to suffer on account of you?” Isaac had to pluck Davey and Michael by the seat of their Edwardian pants before he could get to Leo.
“Go back to your jail. Leo, the guards will miss their pinochle without you.”
Leo stumbled towards the exit, nurses, patients, and visitors popping out of doors to stare at him with loathing in their eyes. Davey and Michael blinked scowls at their father. Selma began to writhe on the floor. Spit collected under her nose. “He ruined my insides … oh, my God … oh, oh.” Selma grimaced and squeezed her ribs. “Help me, nurse, nurse.” The boys leaned over their mother, battle-weary, but terrified of the snaking motions of her body. Isaac understood Selma’s scam. Her sputum was clear; he couldn’t find a fleck of blood. Her cries had too much rhythm. He bent down, curling over Selma, so the boys couldn’t hear him. “On your feet, sister-in-law. This place doesn’t carry collision insurance. If you’re thinking of hospitalizing yourself, here’s my opinion. Some of the wards have handcuffs hanging from the beds. Sister, I’ll lock you in. This is Bellevue, remember? People have been known to wander for years in the crazy ward.”
“Fuckface,” Selma mouthed into Isaac’s chest as she fixed her stockings. The boys witnessed Selma’s miraculous rise. They hugged her, pushing Isaac off with mean little blows.
Marilyn smiled from her grandmother’s doorway. Isaac was plagued by a swarm of relatives, like any Jewish patriarch. He supplied the family glue. The Sidels would have crumbled long ago without the ministrations of Isaac. He soothed, he slapped, he mended broken wires, Marilyn’s incredible daddy.
The crime reporters wanted their conference in the Police Commissioner’s rooms, where they could peek at the furnishings of an old commissioner, Teddy Roosevelt; draperies, a gigantic desk, portraits of Teddy on the wall. Isaac wouldn’t allow it. He herded the reporters into his own office, which had no marble fireplace, no chandeliers, no maroon on the windows, no desk with historic chinks and scars and a spacious hole carpentered for the knees of a future president of the United States, and could only remind such men and women of their ancient, cluttered “news shack” on Baxter Street. Isaac wouldn’t provide sandwiches, or a police captain in a handsome tunic to coddle the reporters; Brodsky became his press secretary. The chauffeur clucked behind Isaac with envelopes belonging to the lollipop case.
The Chief talked of Rupert and Stanley’s Chinatown escapade in primitive style, without embellishments, winks, and anecdotes, or the mannerisms of Barney Rosenblatt (Cowboy loved to rattle his cufflinks at reporters). Brodsky didn’t hear the scratch of a single fountain pen. Cradling their notebooks, the reporters stood with slanted heads. The Times man was the first to jump on Isaac. Could the Chief en lighten him? What did the First Deputy’s office make of isolated rat packs such as the lollipops preying on old men and women without real cause, devoting themselves to senseless destruction?
“It’s a worldwide phenomenon,” Isaac said, cuddling his chin. “The same thing is true in Paris. The French police can pull any master criminal out of a chart, but it’s teenage bandits—lollipops—who are talcing over the Champs Elysées. Babies robbing banks. Without a name or a face. Some Billy the Kid with a cheap kerchief on his nose.”
“Or Robin Hood,” said Tony Brill, the fat man with credentials from The Toad; neither Brodsky nor Isaac had ever noticed him at Headquarters.
Isaac frowned at this Toad man, ignoring Robin Hood. “Eight-year-old muggers and rapists in New York,” he said. “Killers at nine and ten. Are we supposed to keep infants in our confidential files?”
The stringer from Newsweek had a passion for intelligence tests. He led Isaac away from abstract causes, and asked him to fish through the envelopes in Brodsky’s hand. “Chief, you must have a sorry bunch of detectives doing research for you. Where’s your fact sheet on Rupert Weil?”
Brodsky grew miserable fumbling inside the sleeves of different envelopes. The stringer was already smug. “What’s the kid’s I.Q.?”
“Two hundred and seven,” Isaac said, making Brodsky close all the sleeves.
The Daily News man began to titter. “The kid must be a genius. I hear Mozart only came in at a hundred and ninety-nine.”
“Two hundred and seven,” Isaac said.
The stringer was obstinate. “What about Esther?”
“She went to parochial school,” Isaac said. “Her teachers are Spagnuolos, suspicious people. They refused to supply us with any records. But I don’t have much faith in intelligence quotients. They tell you very little. Rupert was a chess player once. He could have been a grandmaster, who knows? He gave it up at twelve. Was it ‘intelligence’ that told him where to place a knight? Look at Bobby Fischer. He has an I.Q. of a hundred and eight or nine. So give me a theory about geniuses? I’m not begrudging Rupert’s terrific score. But his genius comes from willfulness, from a maddening obstinancy, not a talent for checking the right box. Take my word. Your geniuses come narrow these days. They have the power to stare at an object, a piece of fruit, a man’s heart, and block out everything else in this stinking world.”
The reporters hadn’t anticipated philosophical notions from a police inspector. The two nice ladies from the Brooklyn Squire, who were partial to Cowboy Rosenblatt, considered it an odd turn of events that Stanley Chin and Sophie Sidel should land in the same hospital. Was Isaac slinging mud in Cowboy’s eye? Had the caper at St. Bartholomew’s been staged for the benefit of newspapers and magazines? Was Rupert Weil working for the First Deputy’s office? Did he steal the Chin boy at Isaac’s request?
“Pure coincidence,” Isaac muttered. “Stanley has nothing to do with my mother now. And it’s a crazy idea to think that Rupert works for me.”
“Not so crazy,” said Tony Brill.
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing.…” Tony Brill had to retreat from Isaac’s terrible glare. The
Toad couldn’t insure him against potholes and loose bannisters at Police Headquarters. “Chief Sidel, weren’t you friends with Rupert’s dad? Maybe the kid was trying to find a subtle way to cooperate with you.”
“Bullshit,” Brodsky said. The members of Isaac’s rubber-gun squad peeked into the room. Because they didn’t have pistols at their hips, the reporters mistook them for civilians, and figured they could be rude to ordinary clerks. The rubber-gun boys were waving frantically at Isaac, without a bit of color in their cheeks. Brodsky mingled with them. His pants began to slide under his belly. He had to grab his pockets to save himself. “Conference dismissed,” he croaked with a tight mouth.
The reporters piled out of Isaac’s office, dissatisfied with the surreptitious moves of First Deputy men. Isaac remained with Brodsky and the rubber-gun boys. “What’s wrong?”
“Isaac, a package came to you … from Rupert Weil. We called the bomb squad. They’re bringing over a special dog to sniff it out It could be a booby trap.”
“Dummies,” Isaac said. “I don’t need a lousy dog.”
It was wrapped in butcher paper, with heavy string on the outside, the kind of string a bialy maker might use to secure a bag of rolls. It was a tremendous package, over two feet high. Isaac couldn’t bite through the string; the fibers were too coarse. Brodsky ran for a pair of scissors. Isaac snapped at the knots. He tore under the butcher paper. The rubber-gun boys could see the rounded edges of a hatbox, a hatbox with a name on it: Philip Weil. Isaac opened the box. Brodsky put his hands over his ears. Isaac’s other men slinked to one side. They saw a hand rustling in crumpled newspaper.
“Isaac, what the fuck is it?”
He held a chesspiece, a black bishop made of wood, with the points of a miter sitting on top, an inexpensive piece out of Rupert’s own collection. The rubber-gun boys were bewildered. The package confirmed Rupert’s craziness for them. Isaac wouldn’t offer his opinion. He chased out all his men. “Brodsky, close the door.”
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