Paradise Man

by Jerome Charyn

  “Ah, Jesus,” Holden said. He called Saxe & Son. Bern arrived with a different wagon. “I’m sorry, Holden.” That’s all he said. There was no talk of payments. Bern disappeared with Harrington’s body, wrapped in a painter’s cloth.

  Holden could have driven away in the limousine. But it was Harrington’s car. He took a cab to Chelsea, got out, circled the block, and darted upstairs to his mattress pad. Fay was at the door, with agony in her eye. “Where were you?”

  “I couldn’t call.”

  “It’s like Michael. You come, you go, and you worry your women to death.”

  “I couldn’t call.”

  “I made dinner, breakfast, lunch, and had to sit staring at the food like an idiot, thinking you’d come if only I cared enough.”

  “Fay, we have to move.”

  “What?” she said, whipping at her hair until Holden, with all his regret, and with murder on his mind, wanted to make love to her, not on the bed, where they’d linger for an hour, but with Fay against the wall, arching her back, while he climbed against her shoulder and she scratched the wall.

  “It’s not safe here ... two of my people got killed. What happened to the gun I gave you?”

  “I forgot to wear it,” she said.

  The bumper couldn’t help himself. He slapped Fay. It had the violence of a kiss. She didn’t move. “I’ll take you home,” he said. “It’s better.”

  “No,” she said. She found the holster and put it on.

  “Fay...”

  “Shut up. We have to move.”

  She packed her things and Holden grabbed the suitcase, marched out with her, and locked the door. She looked at him. “You left a closet full of clothes.”

  They took three cabs and ended up on the other side of the seminary, a block from where they’d begun. She didn’t ask him about the ritual of that ride. She could have charted it on a curve, the paranoid loops of a gunman. The longer the ride, the nearer the destination. That was the logarithm of Holden’s life.

  His new apartment was exactly like the old. A couch, a bed, a kitchen table, a VCR. All she had to do was stand in the middle of the room, and the apartment was hers.

  “I missed you, Sidney. Lie down with me a little.”

  “Can’t,” he said.

  “I could take off your clothes.”

  “I wouldn’t let you.”

  “What if I pulled out the gun I’m wearing?”

  “That wouldn’t work. I know you’d never shoot. Look, if I’m not back in forty-eight hours, get into a cab and run uptown. Understand?”

  “Yes, I hear you, Sidney.”

  She fiddled with his scalp. She went under his holster, inside his shirt. She was crazy about Holden. She’d lied to him, of course. Michael had made love to her. But if she hadn’t got used to his wildness that week in the bungalow colony, his long silences, his gentle way with his brothers and with her, she wouldn’t be here with Holden.

  He turned her to the wall, hugged her like a delicate ape.

  He was lost without Loretta. Could barely make a fist. He was like an infant gone out into the world. He went to Muriel’s, marched up the stairs. The debutantes sat in a corner. It was a slow time of day.

  Muriel’s eyes had little moons in them. The moons weren’t for Holden.

  “Where’s Gottlieb?”

  “He took a leave of absence.”

  “Mind if I look?”

  He searched in all the closets. Gottlieb had emptied his bureau. The kid must have gone to Singapore. But Holden discovered Rex coming down the stairs. The playwright was wearing one of Muriel’s best silk robes. The robe was ridiculously small. His genitals hung out. Holden grabbed the giant, pinched his face until Rex’s lips made a sucking sound.

  “Aren’t you going to ask me about your wife?”

  Rex’s mouth stretched like a horrible mask across his face. The giant began to shiver. Holden stopped pinching his cheeks.

  “Don’t you ever touch me again.”

  “Why? Going to tell your dad?”

  “Listen to me, Holden. Forget about Fay. She always comes back. She’s been having a breakdown for years.”

  Muriel arrived with a pocket pistol, a silver Le Francais that could have shot his eyes out. “Holden, you’re disturbing one of my clients.”

  “Where’s your loyalty? I have longer standing in this house.”

  “Not any more. Holden, you’re not welcome.”

  He didn’t care if the bitch was Annie Oakley. He plucked the silver gun out of her hand and hurled Muriel across the room. The debutantes fell on Holden. Begging and screaming, they knocked him to the floor. He had to crawl out from under their thighs.

  He got to the street with his jacket hiked up above his shoulders like a humpbacked clown. Six men were waiting for him. They weren’t bumpers he could recognize. Their suits had come from a suburban mall. One of them wore pink socks. “How are you, lovey?”

  Shooters from Chicago wouldn’t dress like that. They were some kind of gang from Queens. Now he remembered. They wore prairie clothes.

  A Cadillac stood at the curb, a sleek black job, good for a civilian general. Had Fortune 500 come after Holden with goons in pasty pants?

  They shoved him into the car. Holden landed on the floor, near the polished brown shoes of the Queens district attorney.

  Paul Abruzzi patted the cushions and smiled. “Hello Holden. Be a good boy and sit down.”

  14

  THEY DROVE ACROSS THE Fifty-ninth Street bridge in Abruzzi’s Cadillac. Holden’s brains weren’t right. Should have figured that the goons were from the district attorney’s own detective squad. He was prince of the city, their Paul. He went to the opera with his voluptuous daughter-in-law. He spoke at bar mitzvahs, weddings, and in front of the bishop of Queens. He was more popular than any politician. He rode out of the Criminal Court Building in Kew Gardens and made war on mobster families. He was merciless. His own Fay had been captured in the fight. He could have run for governor, but he preferred a nice, safe seat on the bench. He was a widower, and he didn’t intend to marry again. Holden understood. He didn’t like to go to the opera without Fay.

  They brought him to a shack in St. John’s Cemetery. It had one comfortable chair, for the D.A. Holden had to sit on his fists.

  “I’ll be blunt,” Abruzzi said. “I didn’t mind a little fling with Fay. She’s a stormy woman. And my son hasn’t been much of a husband to her. I let you have your games. But it’s time to give her back.”

  “It’s too late, Paul. I’m in love with her.”

  The detectives bunched around Holden and banged him with their shoulders.

  “Send them away, Paul. We’re having a discussion.”

  “Get out,” Abruzzi said, and the six detectives moved over to the door.

  “Paul, the best woman my father ever had is killed. My chauffeur is killed. Muriel gives me a funeral face. Why?”

  “You were getting too popular. This town doesn’t like bumpers who are on the hit parade.”

  “But who put me there? I had your consent to get Fay and deal with the Pinzolo brothers.”

  “There was nothing on paper,” Abruzzi said. “I didn’t sign a death warrant.”

  “It comes to the same thing. I couldn’t have gone into the Rockaways without a nod from you.”

  “You could still be hit with a homicide rap. Infante’s not going to save you.”

  “I’ll get another lawyer and subpoena your ass ... Paul, you’re a son of a bitch. You draw Red Mike into your own web. Why would he have figured on Fay unless you made it clear that she was your prize? Who the hell would kidnap a district attorney’s daughter-in-law?”

  “You’re sick, Holden. And I’m taking you off the street.”

  “Handcuff me,” Holden said. “I’d love to wear your cuffs. You can make the arrest yourself ... are you going to kill me on the way to Kew Gardens?”

  “You’re really disturbed. I could have you committed, Holden. I know a
couple of doctors who’d declare you insane.”

  “That’s even better. I’ll have time to write my memoirs in the crazy house. It will have Edmundo on the first page. I’ll tell how you let the Cubans into Queens. Isn’t that what your feud with the Pinzolos is all about? Cuban money under the table.”

  Abruzzi rose up from his chair to punch Holden, while the six detectives held Holden’s arms. “Don’t you ever call me a thief. This is a cemetery, Holden. Or haven’t you noticed? Think of the reputations my boys could make. They’ll tell their grandchildren how they took out the lights of the great desperado as he was trying to threaten the district attorney.”

  He punched Holden again.

  “Fay might not stick to that story ... if she loves me enough,” Holden said.

  His nose began to bleed.

  Abruzzi pointed to the detective with the pink socks. “Go on, Dimitrios. Wipe him. I can’t stand to look at all that blood.”

  Dimitrios held his handkerchief to Holden’s nose.

  “Get smart,” Abruzzi said. “I’m the last ally you have left. I can deputize you, give you a little work, and no one would ever dare harm you ... just send Fay to me.”

  “I can’t,” Holden said, with the handkerchief against his nose. “When I’m in love I’m in love. She can still go to the opera with you and all that. But she has to live with me.”

  Abruzzi sat down again. “You’re a bumper. You couldn’t hold her very long.”

  “Then what are you worried about?”

  Abruzzi laughed with his detectives around him. “The man is silly in the head ... take his shooter and let him go.”

  “I have a carry permit, Paul. It’s a licensed gun.”

  “Take his shooter, I said.”

  Dimitrios took Holden’s gun with the same bloody handkerchief. Then Abruzzi and the six detectives walked out of the shack. And Holden had to climb across that cemetery all by himself. He wondered if Saxe & Son did any business at St. John’s. He got to Metropolitan Avenue and found a gypsy cab. His nose was still bleeding.

  He slept with Fay that night, held her, listened to her breathe, and started to prowl at four A.M. He tore a Beretta Minx out of a hole behind the tub, where it had been wrapped in an oily rag, toyed with the gun, because he didn’t have Goldie to fix it, and went back to sleep. Fay undid his turban after breakfast while Holden sat in front of the mirror. He had a purple dent over his eye where Carmen’s hammer fell. He couldn’t afford to wear a turban out on a kill. That white hat made him too much of a target. Even with a purple dent, he was just another man. But a whole city could recognize him in a turban like that.

  “Dear,” he said, buttering his after-breakfast toast. “I met with Paul yesterday. He misses going to the opera with you.”

  “Paul loves the ballet.”

  “Well, you don’t have to give the old man up on my account. Call him. But not from here. And don’t let him bring you back to Chelsea. If it’s Lincoln Center or something, you get on a bus. You ride ten blocks. Then you get off and wait for me. I’ll bring you home.”

  “Sidney,” she laughed. “It’d hardly worth it. I mean, I admire Paul ... he’s been good to me. But I can’t turn every little occasion into a nine-hour marathon. He’s only my father-in-law.”

  “He likes you,” Holden said. “Meet with him ... next week.”

  “What about us? I want to go to the ballet with you.”

  “We can’t sit in public together. It could get you killed.”

  “Then it’s breakfasts and baths and late night films on the video. Sidney, what happened?”

  “I lost my base and I have to get it back.”

  “That tells me everything,” she said. “You’re as devious as Michael.”

  “Don’t mention Red Mike. It hurts.”

  “Then what should we talk about? Destry Rides Again?”

  Holden had a dream of the future. Fay would become another twig, a woman who could twist his insides with a couple of words. She followed him to the window. “I didn’t mean it, darling ... Sidney, I have an uncontrollable tongue. I never used it on Michael. I didn’t have the chance. But that’s why Rex ran away from me. He couldn’t write at home. He had to take an office. And once it happened, we didn’t have much of a marriage. He’d wander from one whorehouse to the next ... he couldn’t even stand a proper affair. I know Rex. It would have been like taking a second wife. But it’s peculiar. He can’t write a line without being married. It comforts him, the idea of having a wife. He loves our daughters, Sidney, but fatherhood doesn’t turn him on.”

  Holden climbed into his pants. He searched the house for a holster cup that would go with the Beretta Minx. He wore a charcoal blazer.

  “You’re not even listening,” she said.

  “I heard. Rex can’t survive without a wife, but the wife has to be far away. I’m different.”

  “Then trust me. Tell me why when we had to move we moved around the corner?”

  “Because,” he said. “No one would expect you to move around the corner. They’d think you’d gone to Italy ... or Siam. That would be the logic of a move. Or maybe into another borough. No one would tour a neighborhood twice if they figured you were far away.”

  His bumper’s logic had returned. Gottlieb was still in town. The kid would feint, leave a lot of smoke, but he was married to Manhattan. Holden kissed his darling goodbye. She clutched at his charcoal blazer.

  “What would happen if my father-in-law kidnapped me after the ballet?”

  “I’d get you back,” he said.

  “Suppose I didn’t want to come. Suppose I was tired of having husbands. Suppose I wanted a life of my own.”

  “Then I’d have to convince you,” he said.

  And he was gone. Fay saw the charcoal wash into the hall. He was like a phantom, Holden. But sweet. She felt like some prehistoric crust that had attached itself to his rhythm. It was his eyes. She’d been in a trance when he shot Michael. It was finished before she could open her mouth. But he didn’t have mean little eyes. They didn’t tighten with each blow of the gun. He seemed as startled as Fay herself, astonished that Michael, Eddie, and the Rat should fall. He didn’t covet her nakedness, compare her tits with every other woman in the neighborhood of Brooklyn and Queens. She’d missed Michael, yowled inside her head, felt sorry for the Rat who would have given up whatever fortune he had for a feel of her, but it was as if her memory had gone, not with the pistol blows that rattled the windows, not with Michael so instantly dead, but with Holden’s eyes, beseeching her, like that poem out of the sixteenth century she remembered from her survey course at Swarthmore.

  “Come live with me and be my love ...”

  Now, twenty years away from her professor’s dull reading, his idiotic, sentimental drone, she understood the poem. Her college had to come from a corpse.

  He was worried about the gun. Because what if Paul lent it to the Cubans, and La Familia shot up some Bandidos in one of their wars, and ballistics could prove the bullets had come from Holden’s gun? Holden would get his ass kicked by the cops. And so he stood in a booth on West Twenty-eighth Street and dialed the district attorney’s office.

  “Paul Abruzzi please.”

  “Mr. Abruzzi’s in conference,” the clerk said. “Who’s calling?”

  “Danford Cohen. Mr. Sidney Holden is my client.”

  “Hold the wire.”

  Holden had to wait a couple of minutes but Abruzzi took the call.

  “Yes. This is Paul Abruzzi.”

  Holden disguised his voice as little as he could. Goldie had taught him that trick, not to overplay. Holden discovered the world at Goldie’s knee. “Hello. Dan Cohen here.”

  “What firm are you with?”

  “Geist and Cohen. We’re entertainment lawyers.”

  “I don’t understand,” Abruzzi said.

  “We’re negotiating the rights to Mr. Holden’s life story. We’ve been talking to De Niro. We’re hoping he’ll play Sidney.”


  “Who’s Sidney?”

  “Holden, sir. He asked me to call. We’ll need a release.”

  “For what?”

  “That marvelous scene in the graveyard. Our guys are writing it in.”

  “Is Holden around? I mean Sidney ... is he there?”

  “Just a moment.” And Holden handed the phone to himself. “How are you, Paul?”

  “Holden, what the hell is going on?”

  “Congratulate me, Paul. I’m getting rich. Hollywood is going to do my life story. They have crazy guys out there. They were looking for a bumper to reveal his life. And you know how it is. With all that publicity about the kidnapping, the guys got to me.”

  “Did Fay put you up to this? Is it Fay’s idea? She and Rex used to run with a gang of Hollywood producers.”

  “No it wasn’t Fay.”

  “How come you didn’t mention it when I saw you?”

  “I had no reason to mention it ... until you took my gun.”

  “So it’s funny business, huh?”

  “Call it whatever you like. But have your boy Dimitrios meet me at Thirtieth and Tenth in half an hour with my gun.”

  “Pretty sure of yourself, aren’t you, Holden? What if he doesn’t show?”

  “He’ll show.”

  “How do you expect him to make Manhattan in half an hour?”

  “You’ve got a siren on your pretty car. Let him use it ... and if the gun’s been fired, Paul, you’re in deep shit.”

  Holden left the booth, swiveling with his eyes, because he had no sense of camaraderie out on the street. He was a bumper without expectations. He approached the fur market, walked into his bank, went down to the vault, took his safety-deposit box into a closet, opened the lid. All his cash was gone. Swiss had a key to the box. The money came from Holden’s corporate account. Any of Aladdin’s officers could have captured the box. He returned it to the vault manager. The Swiss had left him without money, without wheels, without Loretta and an avenue to his rats.

  He strolled toward the river and into another bank, where he kept a box under the name of Whitey Lockman, a ballplayer his father had loved. Whitey Lockman had a social security number, an address (one of Holden’s mattress pads), and filed his tax returns. Holden removed twenty thousand from the box in hundred-dollar bills. Then he marched out of the vault to meet the district attorney’s man, that detective in pink socks.