Marilyn the Wild

by Jerome Charyn

  “What was he doing in your window? You don’t climb fire escapes in a blizzard without an excuse. He was reaching for you.”

  “Sure he was reaching. With a spoon.”

  “Marilyn, he didn’t come over to crack hard-boiled eggs. Not him. You can rip a person’s throat off with less than a spoon.” Coen touched the metal corners of the suitcase. “Where you going?”

  “As far as I can get. Seattle maybe. Vancouver. Manfred, do I have to beg? He’ll make you kill somebody, that father of mine. Or get you killed. It’s all the same to him.”

  Coen shrugged. He had a dent in his cheek. “I aint so hot at running away. What could I do in Seattle? I’d miss the cockroaches. I’d go woolly without the street.”

  She could have grabbed him by the nose and led him out of Bellevue, but she sensed the futility of that. He couldn’t abandon her father’s fort. He was the blue-eyed “angel” of Isaac’s squad. She stood on her toes to kiss him, caressing the blond hairs on his neck with her tongue flicking in his mouth. She didn’t give him the chance to return the kiss, or squeeze her into the closet. She pulled the suitcase away from him and ran down the hall. She wasn’t a girl who could tolerate slow goodbyes.

  Coen listened for the clump of her shoes. He was afraid to watch. A bouncing suitcase would have fucked him in the head. He loved that skinny girl. But the blizzard had stopped, and they couldn’t hide in Isaac’s blanket, or crawl to Seattle. How could he walk away from Isaac with Isaac’s girl in his fist?

  The Chief had communed with his spies: two petty gamblers from Ninety-second Street swore on their mothers’ holy graves that Zorro Guzmann would be coming down to the Port Authority terminal to collect a load of runaway girls arriving on a bus from Memphis. Isaac was suspicious of gamblers who took to swearing on a grave, but he couldn’t snub the opportunity of catching Zorro with twelve- and thirteen-year-old bait. So he crouched on a platform over the big clock with four faces, where he could pick out Bronx pimps and Tennessee girls sneaking along the main concourse of the terminal.

  He kept his chin behind an early edition of The New York Times, with a police radio tucked under his belt. The radio allowed Isaac to confer with his “angels,” who skulked through different parts of the terminal, some of them in women’s clothes.

  “Isaac, we’ll grab the Guzmanns with their pants down, you’ll see,” said Newgate, the FBI man. He had come along with Isaac as a neutral observer, trying to steal the First Deputy men’s techniques. He wore wraparound sunglasses in late February, with a piece of Isaac’s newspaper against his mouth. He had the grubby feel of a white slaver.

  The radio ticked in Isaac’s belt. One of his “angels” was summoning him from the Greyhound baggage room near the Ninth Avenue exit. “Isaac, it’s going down. The two gloms are here. Zorro and his brother.”

  “Not so loud,” Isaac muttered into his belt.

  “Chief, should we piss on their earmurrs?”

  “No. Stay where you are.”

  Zorro and Jorge Guzmann strolled onto the main concourse in wool sweaters and balding earmuffs, tracked by Isaac’s “angels.” Zorro came without his checkered coat, or his pigskin shoes. Earmuffs must have been his uniform in Manhattan. Newgate tittered at the Chief. “Remember, Isaac, if they touch one little girl coming off a bus, they belong to me.”

  Jorge stood under the big clock while his brother went into a telephone booth. Newgate sucked his fingers. Zorro came out, and the Guzmanns continued their stroll. They didn’t look at the platform over their heads. They ignored the “angels” on the escalators, and the weird women with walkie-talkies in their shopping bags. They didn’t smile, or tinker with an earmuff. They left the terminal without a boodle of Tennessee girls.

  Newgate sulked. “Isaac, how did they make us? Who gave them the word?”

  Isaac rushed down to the telephones east of the clock. He found a slip of paper in Zorro’s booth. It read, “Eat me, Isaac.” He sent his “angels” back to Headquarters. He had to duck the FBI man now. “Newgate, I’m going to see my mother. So long.”

  He rode crosstown in a taxi, stopping the cab a block from Bellevue, near the old medical college. He paid the driver, got out, and lunged at a girl. Her suitcase spilled open. Marilyn began picking underpants off the street. Isaac wouldn’t help.

  “You don’t have to worry, papa. I’m not going to bother Manfred any more. He’s yours. God, you get loyalty from your slaves. He had the choice. Blue Eyes wouldn’t budge. Isaac, you must be the greatest lay in New York.”

  Marilyn crept over the underpants. Isaac had to lift her off the ground. Holding her, he could feel his shame. He had manipulated Marilyn and Coen, tricked them into coming together with Rupert on the prowl. Still, her jabber didn’t make sense. He pulled Coen once Rupert dove under Marilyn’s window, but that didn’t qualify him as a “great lay,” or anything else. Isaac wasn’t pimping for Manfred Coen. He slapped at the suitcase, with garter belts and shirt sleeves dangling from the bottom. “Where the hell are you taking that?”

  “To Far Rockaway,” she said.

  “Don’t get cute with your father. I’ll march you right home. I’ll strap you to Rivington Street.”

  “I know,” she said. “You’ll roll blintzes for me and Ida.”

  She ran towards the medical college, hugging the suitcase with one arm. Isaac couldn’t smile at the feeble pumping of her knees. His own skinny daughter was trying to escape from him, running to a college for protection. He had to yank her by the hair before her knees would slow down. “Crazy bitch, you think you’ll get asylum in there? You’ll ask mercy from a bunch of imbeciles who’ve been looking at corpses all day. They’ll wheel you to the morgue with a lump of sugar in your mouth, those ghouls.”

  Her eyes were bulging from the knuckles in her scalp, and Isaac let her go. She had that mad concentrated scowl of her mother; Kathleen was the single person in this world who could frighten him. Mother and daughter, they knew how to squeeze the flesh under a man’s heart. “Baby,” he said, “what’s wrong?”

  His purring had no effect. She was shaking under her coat. Burrs appeared in her forehead, long burrs that could split a girl’s brain. Isaac launched her with a soft shove. “You’re free,” he said. She didn’t move. With two fingers he quieted the burrs in her head. She trudged towards Second Avenue, losing a sock on the way. Isaac recognized the queemess of that sock. Magenta wasn’t Marilyn’s color. The sock belonged to Coen.

  Isaac crossed over to the hospital. He walked under the hump of a glass canopy that was shedding layers of ice. He entered Bellevue with two wet ears. Isaac couldn’t afford to bully the girl at the main desk. Police chiefs weren’t allowed near Rupert’s bed without a pass. Rupert was in the custody of Manhattan children’s court; Isaac had to keep his fingers off a fifteen-year-old boy. He mumbled “Rupert Weil” to the girl at the desk.

  The girl said, “Sorry. You can’t go up. His pass box is empty. He has visitors in his room.”

  Isaac drew out his badge. “Miss, I’m a friend of his father. A personal friend. Deputy Chief Inspector Sidel. Would I harm the boy? Ask your supervisors. I’m at Bellevue twice a week.”

  The girl stared at the blue and gold leaves on Isaac’s badge. She scribbled a pass for him. “Fifteen minutes,” she said. “That’s all you’re buying from me.”

  Isaac crouched upstairs. He showed his pass to a measly sheriff from the children’s court who was guarding Rupert. Any quiff could have gotten past this sheriff. It was lucky for the children’s court that Isaac had Stanley Chin, or the hospital would have lost Rupert and the sheriff’s pants.

  Isaac could see Rupert from the door. The bastards had mummified him; he was taped to a board, with a pulley near his feet. Only a piece of him remained unbandaged, a crooked oval from his eyebrows to the cleft under his lip, including most of his ears. His cheeks had turned a hospital yellow.

  There was nothing sickly about Rupert’s eyes; they were bearing into Isaac with the hunger
of a boy who couldn’t be trapped on an inclined board. Isaac had to look away; you could catch brain fever gaping at a boy who never blinked. His body caught in traction, unable to move, he would have finished Isaac with the hooking power in his eye. The Chief respected such intransigence. But he wasn’t getting into a staring war with Rupert Weil. Isaac couldn’t win.

  He was hit with a maddening smell by the door; he noticed boxes of caramels, black halvah, lollipops with sharpened sticks sunk into them, colored sugar water in little wax bottles that you had to break with your teeth, swollen marshmallows, and white chocolate sitting on a chair. These items must have been transported from the Bronx, where the Guzmanns owned a candy store. Isaac howled at the sheriff, who was asleep.

  “The visitors Rupert had, did they come with earmuffs on their stupid heads?”

  The sheriff made a timid “yes” with a shake of his jaw. Isaac sprang into the corridor with a closed fist. Zorro had been in and out of the hospital before Isaac could scratch his nose. Jorge brought the lollipops and the Russian halvah. Isaac came with empty pockets. The Guzmanns were too primitive to destroy with the rough, grinding hours of orthodox police work. They could slip between spies and two-way radios, and make themselves invisible to undercover men in padded brassieres.

  Muddling over the Guzmanns, Isaac crossed shoulders with Mordecai and Philip, and the three Jewish musketeers of Seward Park were reunited after a lapse of twenty-seven years. They were awkward with each other. Mordecai molded his cap between his knuckles. Philip pulled the webbing under his hand-painted tie. Isaac brushed the radio in his belt with a fingernail. Mordecai, who was always in the middle, a trifle less severe than the two geniuses, spoke first.

  “Isaac, a detective should know something about the human body. The doctors tell us stories about a severed nerve. Do you think Rupert will ever talk again?”

  “Mordecai,” Philip said, “is Isaac a magician? How can he predict?”

  “Philip, don’t cheapen his talents. Isaac is a master at predictions. Didn’t he predict where my daughter was? He took Honey out of the gutter … only that was a month ago. And he gave your son back to you. What does it matter that Rupert will have to walk with three canes? He’s alive.”

  “Mordecai,” Philip said, “that’s enough.”

  Isaac’s puckered belly itched inside his slipover. Could he play the Chief with old friends? “Philip, I’m sorry. It was a crazy accident. I swear to you, my detective didn’t throw him off the fire escape.”

  Mordecai sniggered in Isaac’s face. “Coen? That guy couldn’t push a baby into a puddle. Isaac, your hand was behind the whole thing. You gave the push from your lousy Headquarters.”

  Philip said, “Shut up.”

  “Why? Didn’t he have Rupert’s face on his posters? They would have shot him in the street like a dog. Isaac, I don’t forgive what Rupert did to Sophie and the other people. But there’s a difference between a demented boy and a cop with dirt in his ears.”

  Philip dragged Mordecai by his arm. “Isaac, we have to go.” They shuffled down the corridor, closing in on the sheriff and Rupert’s ward, Mordecai struggling against Philip. Isaac had to shout “Philip, I’ll call you … tomorrow.”

  Isaac’s shoes dug into Bellevue linoleum. He could march downstairs to his mother, or up one flight to Coen. The cuff of his trouser leg swished into the wall as Isaac selected Blue Eyes and the prisoners’ ward. He’d sit with Sophie in the afternoon. He needed Coen’s smile.

  The watchman upstairs saluted Isaac. Freddy was in awe of the Chief. “Isaac, do you have a daughter with light brown hair? She was shouting high and low, but I couldn’t let her in. That’s the rules.”

  Even on a day shattered by the Guzmanns and Mordecai, Isaac had enough pluck to soothe a watchman. “Fred, you did right”

  Freddy clicked the lock for him, and Isaac went inside. The prisoners’ room was bombed out. Isaac had stepped into a war zone. The beds were scattered in a wretched design that made no sense. A junkie lay under one of them, huddling with a child’s top that was much too feeble to spin for very long. The walls had large seams in them, and fresh bites; Isaac could have gone into the plaster with his elbow. Coen was with Stanley Chin.

  They didn’t have any greetings for Isaac. They stared at him from Stanley’s hospital crib, adrift in their own shallow sleep. Isaac had the urge to blow dust out of their eyes. “Manfred, what’s happening?”

  Finally Coen smiled. Isaac expected more. Manfred’s cheeks were too tight Isaac understood the source of it: the boy had Marilyn on his mind.

  “Isaac, should I send out for cupcakes and tea?”

  “No cupcakes,” Isaac said. “Where’s the checkerboard?”

  “We only got chess players in here,” Stanley hissed at the Chief.

  Isaac frowned. Pushing pawns with Coen could remind him of fire escapes and a certain black bishop. He noticed the warped ping-pong table, and the yellow balls. He wanted to challenge Blue Eyes in front of Stanley Chin, take Coen at Coen’s game. But the two sleepy faces near the crib unsettled him. Isaac grew timid. He didn’t reach for the yellow balls.

  The Chief had a gift waiting for him at Centre Street: a special edition of The Toad. Isaac’s mug was on the cover, with the word “ASSASSIN” in boldface and the by-line of Tony Brill. Brodsky and the rubber-gun squad couldn’t hide the covers from Isaac. Barney’s men swarmed through Headquarters, from the basement to the giant cupola over the PC’s rooms, stuffing The Toad into every available corner.

  “Garbage,” Brodsky announced, after reading Tony Brill. The Toad accused Isaac, in wavering margins and blotchy ink, of mounting a “death campaign” against Rupert Weil and the children of New York. “Who’s next?” Tony Brill screamed from the second page. “How many of us will have to give up our sons and daughters to the Behemoth at Police Headquarters? Will we all land inside the Blue Whale?”

  “Pure shit,” Brodsky told the Chief. “Isaac, should I break his feet?” The chauffeur realized the absurdity of his threat. Tony Brill was unapproachable now. The rumor at Headquarters was that Brill had jumped from The Toad to Time magazine.

  “Brodsky,” Isaac said, “go scratch yourself. I’m busy.” He made Brodsky close the door. The Chief had something to do. If he concentrated on the Guzmanns, he wouldn’t have to think about Marilyn the Wild. So he planned his next assault The Guzmanns were immune to First Deputy snares. Jorge had forks in his earmuffs that could sniff a handgun out of girdles and brassieres. Isaac wouldn’t use ordinary spies. He’d have to place a cop in deep, deep undercover. Who would go into the Bronx to poison the Guzmanns’ black halvah? Brodsky? Coen? Cowboy Rosenblatt? Isaac was in a fix. He had nobody to send. Marilyn crept into that country between Isaac’s walls. He couldn’t fish her out of the room.

  The rubber-gun squad stood with their chins near Isaac’s door. They were cursing Tony Brill and tearing Isaac’s picture off the covers of The Toad. “Shhh,” Brodsky said. “You want to disturb the boss? He’s thinking in there.”

  Marilyn the Wild had gone to Port Authority. She sat by herself on the uppermost deck of the terminal, hunched against her suitcase. She had hours to kill before the next crosscountry bus. She roosted a quarter of a mile from the escalators, in an isolated spot. The prospect of company, male or female, could make her nauseous. She’d spill her guts on the wall if she had to explain her flight from three husbands, blintzes, and her father. She didn’t want to say “Isaac.”

  A dude in vinyl buckskin spotted Marilyn on his fourth stroll through the terminal. This dude went by the name of Henry. The sweep of Marilyn’s stockings couldn’t turn him on. Henry was interested in her suitcase. He’d swiped a Polaroid in the morning, and a silk umbrella; with Marilyn’s stuff, he could visit his Jew on Thirty-seventh Street and collect a twenty. He’d fallen in love with a hat in Ohrbach’s window.

  “Hiya, sweet potato,” he said, sitting down next to the suitcase. Marilyn’s scowls couldn’t pull him away. Henry wondered
if the girl was a “pros.” Who else would rest on a balcony with one foot off the ground? Only a whore. She had adorable knees, a strong Irish face, with bumps under her coat where her tits ought to be. Somebody owns this broad. Suppose it was Zorro, the Bronx spic, who had pimping rights at every bus station in New York. Henry could get his ears chopped off. The Guzmanns weren’t human. They came from a forest in Peru. If you tampered with their women, they would bite your nose and leave parts of you in a paper bag. It was a risk Henry had to take.

  First he’d explore a little. “Are you a friend of Zorro, sweetheart?” The whore wouldn’t answer him. “Are you Guzmann merchandise?” Henry felt safer now. He snatched the suitcase, shouting, “See you, baby,” and ran for the stairs, because the fucking escalators were too far away.

  Marilyn stayed on the bench without crying “Thief.” She wasn’t so attached to a pile of underpants. She’d get another pair when the bus stopped in Chicago. Unencumbered, she could travel with a toothbrush in her pocket. She began to doze.

  Dreaming, she saw a buckskin suit, a thief with dangling legs. She didn’t have to touch her cheeks. The suitcase was near her toes. A man was lugging Henry by the nape of his fake buckskin collar. Blue Eyes. She could have strangled him with affection if that thief hadn’t been around. She was dying to lick behind his ears.

  Coen was sheepish with her. “Marilyn, I snuck out of Bellevue. I have forty minutes. Stanley is covering for me. I figured you’d be here. But I wouldn’t have gotten to you without this glom. I noticed what he was carrying.”

  “Manfred, there’s a million suitcases like mine.”

  “That’s true. But how many of them have purple underpants sticking out of the side?”

  They laughed, while Henry had a crick in his neck. He assumed Coen was a gorilla who worked for Zorro. He stuck his fingers in his chest and prayed. He’d heard that in spite of Peru the Guzmanns were religious people. Would they send a priest for him before they peeled his face?