Paradise Man

by Jerome Charyn

  “We were worried. The boss had to go and look for his hospital team. He likes you, Holden. He said, ‘Brothers, don’t let this man die.’”

  Edmundo must have had his own anti-Castro medical corps, refugee doctors from the Bay of Pigs.

  “Where’s Carmen?”

  “The little hammer girl? She broke your head.”

  “Did Edmundo hurt her?”

  “I can’t say.”

  And Holden clutched at the quilt. He had paraphernalia attached to both his arms. The heart machine made erratic cries.

  “You crazy?” the bodyguard said. “Don’t move.”

  “Get Edmundo.”

  “’Mundo doesn’t have time for you. He’s taking a bath ... with Melissa.”

  “Then I’ll meet him at his tub.”

  “Wait a minute,” the bodyguard said. “Have some respect.” And he telephoned downstairs to the tub room. “Edmundo, Holden’s back from paradise ... he wants to see you.”

  Don Edmundo came upstairs in a purple robe. His body was still wet.

  “What did you do with the girl?”

  “Holden, do you always growl like that when you wake from the dead? You had a terrible concussion. We had to take pictures of your skull.”

  “What did you do with the girl?”

  “I took her home.”

  “I thought she was living here.”

  “Not a chance. She was a part-time maid. Muriel hired her last week. How could she tell the girl was a Pinzolo? ... Carmen was waiting for you, Holden. She must have memorized your routes.”

  “And Muriel wasn’t suspicious? All her maids are beautiful like that?”

  “Holden, it’s a classy house. Lots of girls come through the door. Did you want us to keep mug shots on Red Mike’s sisters, eh?”

  “Don Edmundo, get me my clothes.”

  “Clothes, who wears clothes in bed?”

  “I do.”

  “Jeremías, help me. Holden’s delirious.”

  Holden shook the paraphernalia attached to his arms. “Edmundo, I swear it. I’ll knock your whole little hospital down. I’m getting dressed. I want to see how alive Carmen really is.”

  “Ungrateful one, who sat with you six days?”

  “And took baths with every girl in the house. My clothes, Edmundo. And untie me from this bed.”

  Jeremías fetched the doctors, three antiquated men, who buzzed around Holden and untangled every tube and wire. Holden felt like Frankenstein. A girl was summoned to give him a bath. She had short brown hair and a boy’s chest. “Who’s this?”

  “Melissa,” Edmundo said.

  Muriel had discovered one more twig. Melissa washed Holden with a big soapy glove, the same mysterious expression on her face that Andrushka always had. Perhaps it wasn’t a mystery, but nothing, nothing at all ... or some dark dream of Caravaggio. Melissa didn’t say a word. She had all the proper flourishes of her finishing school. She soaped his groin without ever looking into Holden’s eye.

  The doctors redid his turban, unwinding yards of bandages until the room was like one long white carrousel. Took them half an hour to dress Holden’s skull. Then Gottlieb arrived with a full set of clothes. Holden couldn’t be friendly with his rat while La Familia was around.

  Muriel peeked into the room. Her eyes swelled with anger and alarm. “Gentlemen, is he going out on a date?”

  “I’ve recovered.”

  “You’d better leave some instructions, Holden. In case you happen to die on my stairs.”

  Holden Sr. had suffered a heart attack at Muriel’s. Died near the debutantes. Holden stood up. The ceiling seemed to press hard on his head. The mirror registered his likeness: a turbaned ghost in a London jacket. Gottlieb leaned against his shoulder until Holden stopped swaying. He arrived at the door and cured his vertigo with one deep look down the stairwell. He wasn’t going to fall.

  Don Edmundo had a convoy waiting for Holden in the street. Cadillacs, Lincolns, and a Rolls Royce. Edmundo didn’t like to travel alone. Cousins and uncles followed him everywhere, Batista babies who sat behind bulletproof glass with 9 mm rifles. But it wasn’t a simple retinue of soldiers. Edmundo had his own storyteller in one of the cars, his own priest, women from the family compound in Westchester. He’d given up Manhattan as his residencia years ago. But he had offices in three boroughs, at the back of a beauty shop or travel bureau. Edmundo controlled a thousand betting parlors. Every one of his daughters had been married at the Pierre. The husbands were librarians, college professors, novelists who’d never have to starve. Edmundo was establishing his own rabbinical line. He loved the idea of having scholars in his family. None of the husbands was an outlaw like himself. That’s why he tolerated Holden’s eccentric tricks. Holden was a comanchero, a trader with a gun ...

  Holden sat in the Rolls Royce with Edmundo and Jeremías, who lent himself as the driver. Edmundo shut his eyes and listened to Mozart on the way to Queens. He dealt with all the Italian chiefs through his counselor, Robert Infante, but he had contempt for the Five Families, rústicos without politics or art. Edmundo had become a bandit only after the Bay of Pigs. Stuck in the swamps, trapped like a featherless bird, without the American air support he’d been promised, fifteen hundred exiles against the whole Cuban army. He was wheeled through Havana in a cart, the notorious Comandante O, who’d led one of the invasion teams. He was removed from his own men and jailed with murderers and child molesters in the penitentiary at Pinar del Río, where he rotted eight months, a scarecrow in commandant’s fatigues ... until the gringos ransomed him, returned Comandante O to Miami. People kissed his hand on the street. Grandmothers blessed him while he drank coffee in Little Havana. “Comandante O.” But he wouldn’t sit on the Revolutionary Council or dream of yet another invasion with air support that would never come. He left Miami and went “uptown” to the Yankeeland of New York. All his lieutenants followed him, uncles, cousins, aunts. He didn’t have to fight for a living. He had his own Familia.

  And now he was taking a bumper to Queens, an assassin with a code of ethics that Edmundo admired and deplored. Holden was a dangerous man. Edmundo couldn’t tell where the bumper’s honor would bring him. A girl brains Holden and Holden has to see that the girl’s all right. Edmundo wasn’t sure how long he could afford the luxury of such a man.

  The convoy arrived at Red Mike’s simple estate near the veterans’ center in St. Albans. Sometimes soldiers and sailors would drift out of the center in their uniforms and Holden would think of his dad, while he was having lunch on Red Mike’s lawn, the soldiers staring through Mike’s wire fence, starved for company. Mike would often let them through the gate, give them food and comfort until their keepers arrived. And Holden would look for the nearest sergeant among the runaway soldiers and have long conversations on every subject.

  But there wasn’t a sergeant inside the gate. Holden recognized Edmundo’s people. They stood on the lawn in black shoes, waiting for their commandant. Holden realized that whatever Pinzolos were left had become prisoners on their own estate.

  Holden walked into Red Mike’s house with Don Edmundo. He was startled to meet Mike’s dad, who should have been on Rikers Island. Old man Leopardo. He was wearing one of Red Mike’s suits. He must have shrunk a little in the can. Leopardo seemed much heftier a year ago. He’d come out of Rikers to preside over the ruin of his family.

  “I’m sorry,” Holden said. But the old guy wouldn’t answer in front of Don Edmundo. Holden went with him to the window, where Leopardo loved to stand and look at all the grass his son had accumulated.

  “Holden,” Leopardo whispered, “I’m glad it was you and not a stranger ... I wouldn’t want my sons butchered by someone’s hired hand. What the fuck happened to your head?”

  “Carmen went for me with a hammer.”

  “She did that? I’ll smash her face. She had no business mixing in men’s affairs. Mikey loved you like a brother.”

  “Leo, he shouldn’t have kidnapped Abruzzi’s daughter-
in-law. I had to get into the act. Mike must have known that. It became a tribal thing.”

  “He was a hothead, my Mike. He could have buttoned up Abruzzi. But he wanted to steal something that would humiliate the son of a bitch, make him suffer. The D.A. comes down on us like it was a blood feud or something. It wasn’t fair. We contributed to his campaign. My own boys were his precinct captains. And then he dumps on the Pinzolos. Christ, we put up his name to the Democrats, we sponsored the man, and the first time we lose a little popularity, he pounces on us. Mikey didn’t kill. He didn’t send his shooters out. He grabbed the girl ... he would have given her back.”

  “Couldn’t he have telephoned me?”

  “Mikey didn’t want to put you in the middle.”

  “He should have called ...”

  “He had his pride,” Leopardo said. “He took the girl and lived with the consequences.”

  “But Leo, it was a waste.”

  “Not for us. My boys had to follow it to the end. We gave Abruzzi a shit fit. That was the important thing.”

  “Leo, I—”

  “Shh, Holden, it’s done.”

  The old man turned away from the window, and Holden was left with that view of the grass. He could have sworn there was a soldier outside the gate, his uniform slashed by wire. But it was a phantom, encouraged by that blow on the head. Holden blinked and the soldier was there again, and he wondered what strange powers Carmen had given him. He traveled through the house looking for her. He covered room after room, cluttered with Mike’s trophies and hunting guns, Rat’s collection of comic books and baseball cards, like the dross of someone’s childhood, only Rat was involved with comics until the afternoon he died. Holden couldn’t catch a trace of Eddie in the house. A toy, a gift, a photograph? Eddie was gone.

  Holden could hear voices coming from the third floor. He bumped in and out of rooms until he located Carmen and her sisters in an upstairs den. The Pinzolo girls, Dotty, Josephine, Laura, Luiza, and Carmen, lovely, dark, and unmarried in the bower Red Mike had provided for them. Josephine was a grand old lady of twenty-nine. Dot was twenty-six. Carmen was twenty and had troubled Mike the most. She’d never have returned to the house if Don Edmundo hadn’t been holding her here.

  Carmen lowered her eyes, but the other sisters looked at him with a certain sadness, as if they couldn’t stop loving the executioner. Holden wanted to take them in his arms, but he didn’t dare. He’d lost that right in Far Rockaway.

  “Carmen, Mikey knew I’d have to come for him. He’d have come for me if—”

  “He’d never have come for you, not Mike. He’d have told the Five Families and all the Puerto Rican dons to go to hell.”

  “Edmundo’s not Puerto Rican,” Holden said.

  Carmen locked herself in the toilet behind the den.

  Holden rattled the doorknob. “Carmen, talk to me.”

  “The only reason you’re alive,” she shouted from her vantage of the door, “is that the Puerto Rican said he’d kill papa if I hit you one more time.”

  “He’s bluffing, Carmen. He wouldn’t dare. He knows I love you. And he’s not Puerto Rican. He’s a Cuban hero. Comes from the Bay of Pigs.”

  “Who remembers? I wasn’t even born,” she said.

  “Carmen?”

  “Go away.”

  Holden appealed to the other sisters with a squeeze of his eyes. They wouldn’t convince Carmen to come out of the toilet. He’d orphaned the whole family with a target pistol. Red Mike had been the real pater of the house. Leopardo was a guy who liked to strangle people. He could never control the girls. He would have found feeble husbands for them—bricklayers, bums—if Mike hadn’t intervened.

  Holden wandered downstairs, said goodbye to Leopardo, and joined Edmundo on the grass. “I don’t want the girls kept prisoner in this house.”

  “We’re protecting them, Holden ... they could mutilate each other.”

  “That’s their business.”

  “And what if Carmen or Luiza comes after you?”

  “I’ll duck the hammer next time,” Holden muttered.

  “It’s a miracle you still have a head.”

  “Edmundo, I’m serious. Carmen goes free.”

  “I heard you. Carmen goes free.”

  “And how did Leopardo get out of the can?”

  “His sons are dead. I got him a weekend pass.”

  “This isn’t the weekend.”

  “I can’t help it if the Department of Corrections doesn’t keep better tabs.”

  “Edmundo, I want him returned in one piece.”

  “Why are you so considerate of your enemies?”

  “He’s not my enemy. I happened to kill all three of his sons.”

  And then Holden saw khaki checkers of cloth beyond the gate.

  There was a soldier, all right. Holden hadn’t spun him out of the turban on his head. The soldier had green eyes. A fugitive from St. Albans. He wore a battle scarf and his regimental bands. He had a tie and a clean shirt. The only hint of disorder was his tennis shoes. And Holden wondered if the army had adopted sneakers as part of its new battle dress.

  The soldier stood behind the gate and saluted him.

  Holden returned the salute and got into the Rolls Royce.

  Fay

  9

  HE WANTED TO HIDE out until his head healed. He had four apartments, under different names, where no one but Holden had a key. They were his mattress pads. It was smarter than getting on a plane, because airports could be watched, but a street in Chelsea was only a street in Chelsea. Away from the fur market Holden was as anonymous as any man. He had simpler clothes in his four apartments, a VCR, enough canned goods, bottled water, and video cassettes to keep him for a month. None of his rats knew where the apartments were. Goldie was familiar with one, Mrs. Howard with another, but he could step from apartment to apartment until all his baggage dropped and blurred whoever Holden was.

  Sometimes he’d go to one of the apartments and camp there for a week. He could lay the Beretta down in a drawer, retire the silk handkerchiefs, shuck off the tyranny of Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and dress like a scarecrow, put Dietrich on his VCR. But even that wasn’t much of an escape. His dad had loved Marlene, and he couldn’t watch Destry Rides Again without thinking of fathers and sons. He’d start to shiver after five or six days, his teeth would knock inside his skull, and he’d remember the twig, that curling body on his marriage bed, the weight of loving her, the lectures she’d give him on Cézanne while they watched the Academy Awards.

  “Holden, what the hell is Hollywood to you? I’m talking about a guy who structured the world with apples and pears.”

  “Well, I’d rather have Robert De Niro.”

  “That proves you’re a thickhead, because actors can only act.”

  He should have left her a mannequin at Aladdin Furs, and she wouldn’t have haunted his life. After a week of closets and walls, he’d look for his holster and handkerchiefs and return to civilization.

  So he decided not to do his healing all by himself. He’d visit with Loretta Howard and the leopard girl. He arrived late in the afternoon on Oliver Street, entering the front door with his key. Holden was too tired to worry about Bandidos. Mrs. Howard didn’t shriek when she saw the turban on his head. Gottlieb must have phoned in, Gottlieb or another rat.

  “Holden, you have too many corpses in the closet. You’d better stop killing people and take a rest. It’s lucky Carmen didn’t have more than a hammer in her hand.”

  “A hammer’s enough,” Holden said. “I was unconscious.”

  “It did you good. Holden, you have some color in your cheeks.”

  “Any messages?” he asked.

  “The phone hasn’t stopped ringing.”

  “Does anyone know why Big Balls wants me dead? Jesus, I pay an army and we can’t even get the fundamentals down.”

  “There are no fundamentals here. Nobody’s established a line between Huevo and the Parrot ... Holden, it has to be the girl
.”

  Leopard eyes? Holden thought to himself. “She’s with the Bandidos? Did you talk to her about it?”

  “Yes. But she keeps insisting you’re her daddy.”

  “Maybe I am. Can’t I have a lost daughter somewhere?”

  “Crawling under a table while you murder both her babysitters?”

  “What if they weren’t babysitters? And it wasn’t an accident the Marielita was there? What if they’d kidnapped the kid?”

  “Kidnapping wasn’t their usual line. And would they grab a girl who belonged to the Bandidos?”

  “What if they didn’t know who she was? Somebody gives them a girl to hold. I come along. And now I’m the bad guy.”

  “It still doesn’t make sense.”

  “But it makes more sense than worrying about the Parrot’s itinerary. Mrs. H., we’ve got to go public with the little girl, tell some of our people that she’s in our hands. If nobody claims her in a month, then she’s mine.

  “Where’s she going to live? At Aladdin? Holden, you need a wife.”

  “I’ll buy one,” he said. “Where is the Marielita? Napping a little? I’d better not wake her.”

  “Nonsense,” Mrs. Howard said. And they stole into the bedroom Mrs. Howard had prepared for the leopard girl, who lay with a lollipop on her chest. She had a child’s even snores. And Holden didn’t care how many dads materialized. He wasn’t giving her away.

  The girl woke and smiled at him with her leopard’s eyes. Then she saw the bandages and her body shivered.

  “Querida,” he said. “I’m okay.” And he picked her up inside her little gown, whirled her across the room until he saw spots in the wall.

  Mrs. Howard tugged at him. “Holden, you stop that. You’ll both fall.”

  But he held the girl tight until the spots disappeared.