Paradise Man

by Jerome Charyn

  Had he been dreaming of Avignon? He promised himself that on his next trip to Paris he’d take the bullet train down into Provence and visit that city of popes. But he’d lost his concession in France. Billetdoux would clop him the minute he got off the plane.

  “Mother, how long have my lights been out?”

  “Which lights?” the madrina asked.

  “Lights,” Holden said. “How long have I been asleep?”

  “Eleven days, on and off. We’ve had to move three times. We’re traveling light. Holden, this is all we have.”

  Dolores pointed to the next room and Holden saw two sickly men whose hair had been dyed white. Living among Mariels, he understood that inventory of white hair. White was one of Changó’s primal colors. The white in the eye of a thunderstorm, the red of a rooster’s throat. Dolores’ last two soldiers wore red shoes. But Holden couldn’t stop thinking about white hair. The Parrot and his mistress must have worshipped Changó, with or without collares. They couldn’t have been complete strangers to that god. Had they appeared at one of Dolores’ revocacions where Changó was adored with chicken blood? ... met the santita and begun to worship her a little? Dolores would never tell. She didn’t like to talk about chicken blood.

  “Any messages?” he asked, forgetting that he wasn’t on Oliver Street with Loretta Howard.

  “One message.” And she handed Holden a little pewter animal with its head on backward.

  “Where did you get this?”

  “From a blonde,” the madrina said. “She was looking for you. Said she was your sweetheart. But I couldn’t take the chance.”

  “How did she find us?”

  “Holden, we found her. She was wandering in one of our alleys. She had no business there. She could have been killed. Is she your sweetheart?”

  “Sort of,” he said. “Did you tell her I was all right?”

  “I said nothing. I couldn’t give our position away. It was damaging enough that I accepted this little toy from her. She was an unfortunate woman, speaking so loud, calling you Sidney.”

  “Is she safe?”

  “I don’t care. She could have been a decoy.”

  And the madrina walked into the other room to cheer up her two soldiers. Holden was left with the little girl whose frog he’d become. He’d leapt out of Avignon to live with his dad on the plains of Queens. And he’d have to leap out of here.

  “Querida,” he whispered, “find my clothes.”

  But she wouldn’t conspire with him. “Froggy,” she said. “You’re sick. Stay in bed.”

  He grabbed the pudding above his groin, kicked out his feet, and fell into Avignon. He wasn’t a tourist come to suck blood out of a city. He was a kid of three, on a stroll with his dad. A wind blew on his face. The pebbles at his feet were green, yellow, blue. It was like walking on a sea of stones. Avignon was a great picture puzzle. The popes had built a wall around the city to keep out strangers and French kings. But the wall was bitten in a hundred places. Junk and garbage lay outside the city. The French kings had their own castle on a hill across the river, and the kings could spy on the popes. That’s what his daddy said. The popes had built a tomb for themselves. The tomb came with a palace. His daddy took him there. The roof was full of points, like a wall wearing a bunch of hats. Animals seemed to pounce from furrows in the wall. They were the stone leopards of Avignon, put into the palace wall to discourage and frighten French kings. Holden asked his daddy what side of the war he was on.

  I’m with the kings, his daddy said.

  21

  HIS CLOTHES WERE GONE. He didn’t have his watch or his shooter. The pudding had hardened, and Dolores had to pick at it with her hands. The two soldiers were asleep. He listened to them snore.

  “Mother, I have to get out of your inn.”

  “But how will you fight Edmundo’s dogs? You have nothing.”

  “I’ll need a pair of pants.”

  The madrina returned with a pair of red pants. She strung Changó’s beads around his neck.

  “I’m not a worshiper,” he said. “What good will it do?”

  “The lord might pity a man with collares.”

  And the Frog had to rise off his cot in collares and red pants. “Mother, please don’t lose the girl ...”

  Dolores keened at him with all her flesh. He’d disappointed Carmen Miranda. “I am not in the habit of losing daughters. And she is my daughter now.”

  “That’s true,” Holden said, like some philosopher in a dunce cap. Jean-Paul’s bullet must have driven the charity out of him. He picked the leopard girl off the ground, hugged her and her doll. It was like having Huevo’s image in his hands.

  “Querida, I’ll be back for you.”

  “Holden,” Dolores said. “You shouldn’t promise when you have collares around your neck.”

  “Mother,” Holden said, kissing Dolores while he held the girl. “I can’t become a saint overnight.”

  And he walked out of the madrina’s mattress pad. He had no concept of the neighborhood. It was Queens, that’s all he knew. He was familiar with the flatness. Holden hailed a cab. He rode in a rough circle, looking for landmarks. Some candy store he’d broken into with Red Mike? A ballroom where he’d gone dancing with Mike and his brothers, Eddie and the Rat? The shooting range Mike had discovered inside the old Hebrew cemetery? The creek behind the golf club where Eddie and the Rat loved to swim in the raw? But Holden couldn’t find any of these stations. The landmarks had disappeared with the brothers themselves.

  He’d been sailing across Queens for almost an hour when Holden suddenly remembered his finances. He didn’t have a nickel in his pants.

  The cabbie took him straight to Hester Street, and Holden had to run inside to borrow sixty dollars from his tailor. The tailor didn’t smile when he saw Holden. He looked forlorn, like a man who recognized a cadaver in red pants.

  “What’s wrong, Goldie? Did Schatz tell you I was out of commission?”

  “No,” the tailor said. “I knew you were alive. It’s your trousers. I didn’t think I’d ever see you look like a ponce.”

  “I get corrupted, Goldie, when I’m away from Hester Street too long. I’ll need a Duke of Windsor special.”

  “Right now?” the tailor said, with a pair of scissors in his hand.

  “I’m not greedy,” Holden said. “I’ll wait.”

  “I can’t cut a suit while you’re sitting here.”

  “I’ll take one of your prototypes,” Holden said.

  The tailor began to squeeze his eyes. He kept his prototypes under key in a closet. They were six suits his own agents had managed to steal from the Duke of Windsor, while Windsor was alive. His agents had gone into hotel rooms in Paris, Monaco, and Cannes, bribed certain night porters, and come away with the suits. There wasn’t even a price Goldie could attach to the suits. They were outside anything anyone had to offer. He wouldn’t have traded them for the entire wardrobe of Douglas Fairbanks Jr. No one knew of their existence outside Holden and the agents themselves. Half of Holden’s suits had come from one of the prototypes. He was exactly the duke’s measure. And Goldie could cut a “Windsor” for Holden in a day and a half.

  “Will you open your closet? Or do I have to meet with the Swisser’s men in rags?”

  “You must be having dizzy spells. Swiss’ men aren’t in a meeting mood.” But the tailor opened his closet with a tiny silver key. The Frog felt a pungent odor escape. It was the perfume of a tailor’s life. He took out a blue pinstripe Windsor had worn in Cannes and then he turned around and discovered a silk shirt and silk shorts on Goldie’s chair, as if some elf had made an offering.

  He undressed himself.

  Goldie saw the collares and the dark little welt above his groin. “You must have had a good surgeon.”

  “The best.”

  “Holden, you ought to give Nicky back his paper.”

  “What would it prove?”

  “Lots of things. The Swisser might forgive you.”

/>   “No, he wouldn’t. It was planned this way. Or he’d never have sent me to bump Red Mike. Goldie, my goose was cooked.”

  The Frog stepped into his silk shorts and then Goldie took over the job of dressing him. Holden liked the feel of his tailor’s hands. He stood in front of the mirror in Windsor’s coat.

  “Fits like a glove,” Goldie said, rummaging among the pairs of shoes he kept around for Holden.

  “Goldie, I’ve been having dreams of Avignon. And it’s a laugh. I see leopards in a wall. How could I have remembered that? I was a pisser the last time I saw Avignon. Two or three.”

  “I was there once at the end of the war.”

  “And did you find leopards shooting out of a wall?”

  “Leopards? Yes. I think there were leopards.”

  “Then I didn’t make it up. And my father must have told me about the city’s stone floor, and the leopards, and a crazy wind.”

  “The mistral,” Goldie said. “People shoot themselves every time it blows.”

  “But why can’t I remember my father telling me? Did somebody make him stop talking about Avignon?”

  “Ask the Swiss.”

  “I might if I could get near him. Goldie, I’ll have to ask you. Maybe my dad didn’t have such a bad time in Avignon. Was he in exile, Goldie, like you said? Or was he on a caper for you and the Swiss?”

  “Jesus,” Goldie said, staring at Holden’s image in the glass. “For a minute you looked just like the duke.”

  “I’m not Windsor. I just happen to wear his pants. Goldie, I want to live long enough to learn about my dad. He wasn’t hiding in Avignon. He was American. And he was moody. He would have stuck out. You sent him there. Why?”

  The tailor touched his chin. “It was the Germans,” he said. “They had their own arts and archives section in Avignon. They buried a fortune of paintings under the street. A frog called Deladier worked in that section. He knew where the paintings were buried. Swiss got that from a captured German general. So we sent your father in after the war. A handsome GI. He knew a couple words of French. We got him a cover bride, a lady frog from Avignon, to give him a reason to settle. But your damn father took it seriously. He wasn’t supposed to sleep with the bitch. We hired her to walk around Avignon with him and carry a shovel, so he could dig up the streets. But she got big in the belly and couldn’t carry a shovel for him. And while she starts to swell, he’s out cultivating that frog, Deladier. Buys him drinks, butters him up. And the baby’s born. You. Your father’s getting nowhere. He’s dug up half of Avignon. That’s why he could recite the colors of different stones. He knew every path in Avignon. He strokes Deladier another year. Then they have a fight. Your father hits him with a shovel. No more Deladier. And the bride? She wants to blackmail your dad and us. That’s how it was. I mean, we couldn’t let her go alive.”

  Holden stood in his Windsor suit. “He killed my mother.”

  “Don’t look at it like that. She was a whore, a tramp we bought to play his wife. But we got him out of Avignon. And all of us adopted you. Swiss, me, and your father. You were like our own flesh.”

  “Goldie, wasn’t my father a military policeman before he got to Avignon? What did he do?”

  “He bullied and bumped for arts and archives. When some thief would bother us, we gave him to your dad.”

  “Then why was he a chauffeur in Manhattan?”

  “We couldn’t afford to give him much of a profile. There’d been a stink in Avignon. Two murders.”

  “And so you groomed me. That was clever. You figured homicide ran in the blood.”

  “Nothing of the kind. It happened that way. You were good with a gun.”

  “And my father strangled on his own guts for murdering his wife ... and depriving me of a mom.”

  “No, no,” the tailor said. “It’s the wrong interpretation. She was never a mom to you. She was a slut who decided to get pregnant, so she could have a piece of the caper. Your dad would have ditched her, no matter what.”

  “Goldie, what was her name?”

  “I swear to God, she was a local bitch. We never bothered to ask.”

  “What was her name?” Holden said, a dark stitch developing under his eye.

  “Nicole, I think. Nicole. But it was a rotten deal all around. There was no treasure under the streets of Avignon. That German general had lied. Swiss found him seven years after the war. Sitting with millions in a Hamburg bank.”

  “I don’t care about your general. What did my mother look like?”

  “Holden, I hardly saw her. She was a tart.”

  The Frog turned from the mirror. Half his face was dark. And Goldie knew he couldn’t dismiss Holden’s mum like that. “She was a pretty girl. Young. Had a bit of a tuck with the Germans, I hear. Took a fancy to some lieutenant in arts and archives. It was all on the sly. The Germans handed her over to us. Because we had a partnership, you see. Rembrandt wasn’t picky. Art is art.”

  “My mother, was she short or tall?”

  “She was regular, I’d say. And slim, with brown hair and brown eyes. Like you, Holden.”

  “And my father loved her?”

  “You could call it love. But he didn’t have a choice. The bitch was blackmailing us ... I mean, your mum decided to make a profit on our hard luck. We were all in jeopardy. There were generals involved. We couldn’t have her blow the whistle, could we?”

  “Shut up,” Holden said. “Loved Nicole and killed her. And he never bumped another person in his life.”

  “Yes. That’s a good summary,” the tailor said. “Back in America he discovered how much he liked to drive. He drove the Swiss. Everywhere. He was almost the Swiss’ companion.”

  “Goldie, you sit on your ass in a tailor shop and you judge the world. You pissed my father’s life away in Avignon, had him dig for paintings, paintings that were never there, and then you brought him home to live and die like a dog. Goldie, what was my father’s real name?”

  “Mickeljohn,” the tailor said. “That’s Scotch. Your dad’s people came from Aberdeen or Dundee. I don’t remember. They worked the land for some kind of laird.”

  “A laird like Swiss. Or you.”

  “I was never one of the bosses. I can hardly keep up with my bills. I’m a stinking tailor.”

  “A tailor who supplies guns.”

  “It’s a hobby, that’s all. I promised your dad I’d look after you.”

  “Goldie, give me his whole name.”

  “Ah,” the tailor said. “I’ll have to think.” He hunkered low as if he could draw names out of a pocket. “Sidney Michael David Hartley Mickeljohn.”

  “And I’m little Sid.”

  “Don’t say that. Sidney Mickeljohn is wanted for murder. We had to erase whoever that was. It cost us plenty. Holden was a good name. It held him for thirty years. We didn’t sink your dad. Swiss was loyal. Swiss brought him out.”

  “And built a grave for him at Aladdin Furs. It’s my turn now.”

  “I could ask Swiss for a truce. It’s not too late. The man listens to me. We produced a lot of masterpieces together. Some of the Rembrandts they’re auctioning now came out of our workshops in Rennes. We had twenty geniuses around. All refugees from arts and archives. But the French police were coming down on us. I mean, you can’t do a Rembrandt a month and get away with it for long. We had to scatter.”

  “And you went into suits.”

  “Suits were my first love. I’d never have done Rembrandts if it hadn’t been for the war. We seized an opportunity. We all did.”

  “And now you’ll seize something else. You’re going to help me bump the Castiglione brothers.”

  “Couldn’t do that. It would be disloyal to the corporation. I still have my scruples.”

  “Look at me, old man. Who’s going to win?”

  “You are,” Goldie said. “Swiss has you fifty to one. But you’re a lad who always defied mathematics.”

  “What shooters do you have in the house?”

  �
��I wasn’t prepared,” the tailor said. “I didn’t go shopping. But I have a Walther PPK I assembled last month.”

  “Red Mike used a PPK. You didn’t send your ghouls out to raid his garbage cans in Far Rockaway?”

  “It’s an altogether different gun,” Goldie said.

  “I’m glad, because I wouldn’t want to steal thunder from Mike.”

  Goldie found the PPK with its holster cup and helped the Frog slip it on under the Duke of Windsor’s coat. There was a tiny bulge that Goldie smoothed down with his palm. “Done,” he said. “What’s the program?”

  “First I have to settle with the twins. Goldie, where are Jupe and Jean-Paul?”

  “Jesus, I’m not a tattler. I can’t compromise Swiss. It’s one corporation.”

  “You owe me for sentencing my dad to all those gray years.”

  “I didn’t sentence him. I was his friend. I looked after both of you. I made you meat pies when you were a boy.”

  “And you reported all my moves to the Swiss. You put a gun in my hand. You dressed me up. Where are the twins?”

  “Camping on Oliver Street.”

  “In Mrs. Howard’s flat? Whose idea was that?”

  “Mine,” the tailor said. “I can’t help it if I’m a thinker, Holden. It was the best place for them to be. The premises were unoccupied. And Swiss didn’t have to pay the rent.”

  “You are a thinker, Goldie. And if you’re planning to call the Swiss after I leave, I’d forget about it. I’m wearing magic beads. I’ll feel your message, Goldie, honest I will. And I’ll visit you with my PPK.”

  “I wouldn’t call the Swiss,” Goldie said, with a glint of his teeth. “I never betrayed you. I never steered you into a trap.”

  Holden left the shop, wondering how much the tailor had lied. Goldie was a forger. He could have invented Nicole and Sidney Michael David Hartley Mickeljohn. But Holden did have a couple of factors. He wasn’t born under a table. He had a mum. A tart, Goldie said. With brown hair. And his dad had strangled this Nicole to keep her from telling about a fortune under the streets of Avignon. He imagined his father with a shovel, chipping at the stones, while his mum carried him in her belly. That’s how he arrived on Oliver Street, with images of a mum he’d never met. He walked around the back, to Loretta Howard’s yard. Her pigeon coops were empty and there wasn’t a creature in the cat barns she’d built. Civilization had fled from Oliver Street.