Holden wondered what it would be like if Andrushka had never gone to Paris. She’d have ended up with Caravaggio in her bed, and Holden on the floor. She’d followed Swiss into her own art and archives division. And Holden had trouble learning a little Matisse. But she hadn’t lost her beauty with a bit of fat.
“Frog,” she said. And there was a teasing tenderness in her voice.
“What is it?”
“I’m in love with your suit. Bruno doesn’t have anything to match it.”
“It’s a prototype.”
“Explain to her what a prototype is,” Bruno said. “It’s pure theft. That suit came off the Duke of Windsor’s back.”
“Not quite. It came from his closets ... and Swiss, I’ll need a raise. Fifteen thousand a month isn’t enough for New York.”
“There’s plenty a man who wouldn’t complain about your salary. I’ve had a bad year.”
“You stripped half my vaults. I want nineteen thousand a month.”
“Sixteen,” the Swiss said. “Not a penny more.”
“Eighteen,” Holden said.
“Seventeen and a half,” said Andrushka, and Swiss wouldn’t oppose his wife.
Holden would have kissed her, but Schatz was a jealous man.
He went down the elevator with Billetdoux. Billet returned the PPK. “I had to hit you, Holden. That’s my job.”
“It’s nothing,” Holden said. “A little blood.” But his mouth ached. He spat into Windsor’s handkerchief.
The two bumpers said goodbye and Holden marched up to Bryant Park. He searched the bushes, the walks, the open-air library lanes, the cafeteria tables, and couldn’t find Gottlieb. He asked one of the chief pushers, who controlled the north side of the park. “I’m looking for a kid in dirty clothes. Seventeen. With gray eyes.”
The pusher wore fingerless gloves. He had a band around his head. He looked like a narc. “You mean Holden’s whore? He disappeared a week ago.” The pusher might have been twenty, Lionel’s age. “Are you the Frog?”
“Yes,” Holden said. “I’m the Frog.”
“What can I do for you? A little heroin, man. It’s on the house.”
“I need a cab,” Holden said. And the pusher ran out to Sixth Avenue with his fingerless gloves. He whistled and danced and bumped into traffic until he lured a cab to the edges of the park. Holden got in. He didn’t try his circular routes. He didn’t change cabs. He rode down to Oliver Street and camped in Mrs. Howard’s flat. The corpses were gone.
Holden slept for eighteen hours. Then he took a bath. He shaved with Mrs. Howard’s old razor. He gobbled bran flakes out of her cupboard. He examined the santita’s dolls and realized how much he missed her.
He took a cab uptown to that cafeteria of kings. He felt like an infant, returning to the scene of the crime. But Holden didn’t care. He wanted a bite to eat.
All the kings and queens and little countesses smiled at Holden. The waiters hovered around him. Count Josephus stood against the bar, with his back to Holden, and Holden took a seat near the window. The kings were quiet. Florinda left Fatso, her favorite king, to sit with Holden. Her mouth looked grim.
“Are you out of your mind? Detectives have been here most of the afternoon. They’ve been questioning everybody.”
“It’s like Rex’s plays. A lot of barking. If the detectives wanted me, they know where I am. I’m safe among the kings. And I’m sorry. I didn’t intend it to be a public execution. I had to nail ’Mundo.”
“Oh, you,” she said. “I’m not interested in that outlaw. He was Robert’s partner. And he tried to get you killed. I went searching for you when you were shot. Went with Fay. She showed up at Mansions one afternoon, walked over to my table without a word, snubbed the count, and whispered in my ear, ‘Help me find Holden.’ My loving husband had told me you were dead or about to die. And I thought, I’m prettier than this blonde bitch, and Holden loves her, not me. But I couldn’t refuse her, Holden. Besides, I was curious. And worried, worried about you. So I used Robert’s connections, all the pimps around him. And a few cops. I didn’t know there were that many Cuban villages in New York. I hired a chauffeur with a gun. And I talked to Andrushka.”
“Andie helped you?”
“Yes. She drove with us in the car. Your three little wives ... oh, I shouldn’t include myself in that category. But sometimes I feel like a wife to you, Holden. It was Andrushka who found the name of that fat witch.”
“Andie was in the car? She sabotaged the Swiss?”
“She’s fond of you, Holden. You took her out of the filth at Aladdin. You’re her first love. That’s what she said.”
“The three of you talked like that while you went for a drive?”
“Why not? I told Andrushka and Fay that you were the best lover I’d ever had.”
“I’m speechless,” Holden said. “It’s like comparison shopping. I mean, women talk like that?”
“All the time.”
“And what did Fay have to tell?”
“That you liked to make love in the toilet.”
“It’s worse than slander,” Holden said. “I’ve been hit ... and what happened next?”
“We couldn’t find the witch. But she found us. And she said you were breathing, so we went home. But we got to be friends in that car. It was almost like a long ocean voyage.”
“At my expense. I mean, you compared, you talked. At my expense.”
“But we were all worried about you.”
Holden ate his lunch. Ratatouille and London broil. He had two desserts. Florinda abandoned the Frog. She had an appointment with her hairdresser. “Holden, do me a favor,” she said, “and stay alive.”
He saw a rat in the window, a rat from Paul Abruzzi’s detective squad. Holden decided to wait for Paul. He had a crème de menthe. The count kept avoiding Holden’s table. But the little kings arrived with fountain pens and slips of paper. The fountain pens were sleek and silver, and could have been as old as the century, older perhaps, when the idea of a king carried its own special weight, and kings wouldn’t have had enough time to collect in cafeterias and ask a bumper for his autograph.
“Hey, I’m not a movie star.”
But he signed their slips of paper until he discovered Paul. The district attorney stood near him in a dark sack and Holden had to send the kings away.
“Congratulations,” Paul said. “You walked into Mansions yesterday afternoon and settled all your business.”
“Don’t congratulate me, Paul. Just return my shooter.”
“I already did.”
“It was a dupe, Paul. Your gunsmiths must be great at preparing duplicate guns.”
“Sidney, the boys were having their fun.”
“Don’t call me Sidney. I mean, you’re not my father-in-law.”
The district attorney put Holden’s Beretta on the table, wrapped in a handkerchief. “It’s a present from your Uncle Paul. I never liked you, Holden. But we have to get along. I can’t afford another shooting.”
“Edmundo died in Manhattan, Paul. You’re off the hook.”
“Don’t be foolish. That man was tied to me. Or you wouldn’t be out on the street.”
“Good, but I want you to be the first to know. I expect to marry Fay.”
The district attorney laughed into his fist. But his eyes were dull. “She already has a husband. She’s married to my boy Rex.”
“I still intend to propose.”
“Holden, you’ve had a charmed life. Keep it that way. My daughter-in-law is not for you.”
The kings had begun to gather again and Paul excused himself. He’d been recognized. And the Frog watched him pat a few men on the shoulder. Paul was agile in his black shoes. He swayed like a dancer, and Holden was miserable, thinking of Paul and Fay, Fay and Paul.
The Swisser was right. No one at Mansions would let him pay the bill. The cashier kept insisting, “It’s on the house.”
“I don’t accept charity from strangers.”
“Please, Mr.
Holden. You’re one of our oldest customers.”
“Then tell the count to come over here.”
The cashier shrugged until Josephus arrived from the bar.
“Holden, what’s the problem?”
“I like to be greeted, count. I’m making Mansions my favorite restaurant.”
“Is that smart?” the count asked.
“I don’t have to be smart. When I come in, count, you say hello. Understand? Meanwhile, you can hold this.” And Frog gave him the gun inside the handkerchief. “It’s my shooter, count. Take good care of it.”
The count went gray. “Holden, I can’t. How will I explain your shooter to all the detectives?”
“Hide it from them, count. If there’s a problem, go to Paul.”
The air smelled sweet outside the restaurant. The bumper was in his element. He started walking uptown. He had that pewter animal in his pocket, with its head staring at its own tail. He fingered the animal’s back. He was more comfortable with it than red and white collares. He couldn’t fathom all the twists of a jailhouse religion. The bumper had never been to jail.
He went to Madison Avenue with the idea of visiting Fay. But somehow he couldn’t approach the doorman and declare who he was. It was one thing to live with Fay in a mattress pad. But he turned reluctant near her territories. The Frog cursed his own shyness. Courtship had always been difficult to him. It would have been much less complicated to kidnap his darling.
He stood across the street from Fay’s building, stood two hours, and when his darling didn’t appear, he got into a taxi cab.
23
HE COULDN’T LIVE AT LORETTA’S. The rooms reminded him of the leopard girl. He couldn’t live at his office. He didn’t enjoy the company of furriers and Nick Tiel. He moved into his mattress pad. But the walls bothered him. They smelled of isolation, a bumper growing old.
He returned to Mansions, seized a table, and sat. But no amount of kings could soothe him. And it didn’t matter how often Josephus said hello. Holden couldn’t finish his London broil. He was about to leave when Fay walked into Mansions with Rex and their two daughters, girls who were older than the santita and had his darling’s blonde hair. Holden sank into his chair like a spy. His darling sat with Count Josephus. The girls ordered lemonade. They had beautiful complexions and they talked like the characters in their father’s plays. He never thought children could behave like that, with all the bump and bother of adults. He watched his darling move her mouth. He was as drawn to her as he’d ever been. But he couldn’t steal Fay from her own family. He might have sat there with his London broil until the lights went out and the goddess Oyá climbed on his lap to tease him and taunt him. Holden wouldn’t have minded Oyá’s hostile attentions. But Fay looked up from her avocado salad and saw the Frog. And that’s when Holden fled. He was a bumper fated to be alone.
He ran a few blocks, his heart shaking, and discovered Gottlieb in a pair of two-hundred-dollar pants.
“Gottlieb, go away.”
“I can’t,” the kid said.
“Who are you working for now? The Greek furriers? Did you sell them Nicky’s paper?”
“I’m not that dumb. I have the paper, Holden. I’m selling it back to the Swiss ... a cuff at a time.”
“Then you’re a dead person.”
“No I’m not. I’m your whore. And we go half and half.”
“You’re a dead person, I said. You betrayed me twice.”
“I didn’t betray you, Holden. I acted for the firm.”
“What firm?”
“Holden & Company. I’m your junior partner. I’ve been keeping strict accounts.”
“You’re a dead person. I’ll whack you the first chance I get.”
“Holden, it was good business. I had Swiss’ ass to the wall.”
“But you didn’t refer to me.”
“How could I? You were lying in pig heaven somewhere with that Cuban mama. I had to take the initiative.”
“I knew Swiss was full of shit. Nicky’s eyes were heavy. He’s doped up. He can’t create. Swiss is recycling Nicky’s old cuffs.”
“Does it really matter?” Gottlieb said. “We’re rich.”
“If we’re so rich, how come you didn’t find me?”
“Holden, I’ve been following you around for a day and a half. Longer than that. I visited your mattress in Queens. I played cards with the witch. I brought lollipops to the little girl.”
“You’re a dead person.”
“Holden, I had to deal with the Swiss. Dolores couldn’t protect you. She was running out of mattresses and men.”
“So you decided to deal.”
“No. It was Goldie’s idea. He saw what was happening. He met me in Bryant Park.”
“That man never goes midtown.”
“He did for you. He told me how to treat the Swiss. ‘Give him a nibble,’ Goldie said. ‘Nothing more.’ He loves you, that old man.”
And the Frog was depressed. You think you know the world, and then you fall on your ass, like Humpty Dumpty. “All the king’s horses,” he said.
“What?”
“I was thinking to myself. Take my share of the money, kid, and find Dolores. I want her to eat. And bring the little girl some dolls. Tell them, ‘Holden is back on his horse.’”
“You never had a horse,” Gottlieb said.
“They’ll understand.” And he removed Changó’s beads from his neck. “Here,” he said. “Give it to Dolores. Thank her for the god’s hospitality.”
“Where are you going?” Gottlieb asked.
“Home.”
But he didn’t have a home. He had a mattress pad. He went to a realtor, Di Robertis, who rolled money around for thieves in the fur market. Di Robertis was a short, clever man who’d given up most of his clients, but he happened to admire Holden. He found the bumper six rooms on Central Park West. It was in one of the great old towers. The price was a million two. “A lot of gold,” Di Robertis said.
“I’ll get it.”
But Holden’s vaults were in a reckless state. He couldn’t gather more than a hundred thousand dollars. He presented himself to the building’s co-op board. Holden was gloomy about his financial picture. He’d have to borrow from one of the mob banks. And the rates were prohibitive. He’d have carrying charges for the rest of his life. He wished now he hadn’t given up Changó’s beads. A god might be able to reason with a co-op board. And then, in the middle of the meeting, there was a knock on the door. Swiss had arrived from Paris. Di Robertis must have told him about the meeting. Swiss wore a fur coat. He was eighty-one, and he looked like a king. Not one of the royal hoboes who lived in a cafeteria, but a real king, with fury around him and a magnificent fur coat on his back. He wouldn’t talk of Holden’s current life. “I was with this man’s father in the war,” he said. And he entertained the co-op board for half an hour with stories of how he’d rescued Rembrandts from the German army. Even Holden was bewitched.
They walked out together. “Swiss, where will I get the gold?”
“Let me worry about that.”
“Tell me the truth. Nicky will never design a cuff again.”
The owl king glanced at Holden from the depths of his fur collar. “You know that. I know that. But he seems formidable to the rest of the world.”
“You keep him there in the designing room like a prisoner.”
“It’s better than an asylum. He sits. He draws. He drinks coffee. His sketches make no sense. But he isn’t harming anyone ... Holden, I have to catch a plane. I’m due in Paris in six hours. Behave yourself.”
And Holden lingered on that word. How should a bumper behave? He had a new apartment, thanks to the Swiss. He picked up his check at Aladdin. He avoided Nick Tiel. He threatened one or two furriers. But it was simple stuff. Suddenly everyone was paying their bills.
He bought furniture. Couches, carpets, a bed. His windows looked out onto the park. Fifth Avenue seemed across the world. The park itself was an impossible breach
, a canvas of trees that could never be crossed. He’d once lived on the other side of the park, with Andrushka, had looked at the very tower he was living in. And still he couldn’t get that illusion out of his head. The park was uncrossable, an extraordinary veldt. He spied the vague, hidden roofs of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A contraption, a pillbox where Andrushka had gone to study Caravaggio. The roofs of a dream.
And Holden began to feel that he was living in a city of walls. It was midnight, and for a moment, in the darkness, Holden thought New York was Avignon. The towers of Fifth Avenue were like the ramparts of that city, ramparts as Holden imagined them. And he himself could have been locked in the popes’ palace with leopards springing from the wall.
He had a visitor in the morning. The kid. Gottlieb had arrived with his own cup of coffee.
“Didn’t you trust me to fix you a cup?”
“I know you,” Gottlieb said. “You never keep coffee in the house.”
Holden remembered drinking coffee, but he searched his cabinets and couldn’t find a coffee bean.
Gottlieb gawked at the rooms. “What a spread. It’s like a cattle ranch.”
“Gottlieb, get to the point.”
“Dolores wants to say goodbye. She’s going to Miami with the girl. It’s not safe here for them.”
“How’s that? They can live with me.”
“Holden, there’s a crisis and the gods are going crazy. Come on. I’ll take you to her.”
It was Gottlieb who switched cabs, who took Holden into Brooklyn and out again until Holden thought the kid was copying his style. Then he discovered a map in Gottlieb’s hand. The kid was following instructions.
“Dolores doesn’t want a certain god on her tail.”
“I don’t understand. Dolores is a priest.”
“Holden,” the kid said. “I have enough trouble with human beings. What do I know about gods?”
They got out of the fifth cab near the Manhattan Bridge. And they walked along Market Street. There had once been a thriving market under the bridge. But now it was a city of old, abandoned stalls with an occasional shop that had survived, selling broken lamps and rubber tires, or a luncheonette that was so tiny, it couldn’t hold two customers at a time. Dolores was lying on a couch in an ancient shop that looked like a chicken coop. The floor was a dark mass of feathers that had hardened into bricks. The madrina sweated a great deal. She must have lost fifty pounds in the weeks Holden had been away from her. She was a gaunt Carmen Miranda. When Dolores wheezed, the whole couch moved.
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