Marilyn the Wild (13 page)

Esther carried her visions into the street. Several laborers who were digging holes in the sidewalk happened to see a girl with tits peeking out of her coat. They abandoned their shovels to howl at Esther. “Sweetheart, honey, baby dear, you'll catch cold without an undershirt. Ask us, we'll block the wind for you.” She stepped around the holes, refusing to change the course of her buttons. Delivery boys and retired men from Grand Street gaped into the open pea coat and felt a knock between their eyes: it was painful to stare at a nipple moving in winter light “
Cuño
,” the boys said. The old men gave embarrassed shrugs and consoled themselves with thoughts of a bialy and piss-colored tea.

Rupert was ten feet away. He heard none of the commotion surrounding Esther. There were deep bumps in his forehead. Esther didn't nudge him, or cry hello. She had too much respect for Rupert's brainstorms. He was hugging Esther's ammonia under his arm. He walked past her, oblivious to the howling of laborers and delivery boys. Esther adored him chubby or thin, but she was frightened of his skeletal look. Rupe, she wanted to say. Forget about them Chinese Dragons. Stanley won't die in Corona. It's not your fault you never learned kung-fu. I'm not mad any more. But the sharp line of his ears startled her, and Esther didn't say a thing.

She developed a hunger strolling on Ludlow Street. Shutting her pea coat to confound the Puerto Rican clerks, she entered a tiny
supermercado.
A second girl came into the market while Esther shoved a mushy tangerine under her coat. The girl's Irish nose and kinky Jewish hair got to Esther.
I know that cunt.
Isaac's skinny daughter. It had to be. The cunt was living with Isaac now. Rupert and Esther had noticed her sitting on Isaac's fire escape. Marilyn liked to bathe in cold air. They watched her from the roofs, Esther wishing she could break off Marilyn's kneecaps. She was less ferocious in the supermarket, having only one small urge to take out her mask and spook Marilyn the Wild. The moist touch of tangerine skin on her breasts calmed Esther Rose. She went about her business of swiping more fruit.

The clerks grew wise to Esther. How many
muchachas
tanged through their market in a pregnant pea coat? They yanked the bottom of her coat, yelling thief, thief. Tangerines, avocado pears, and overripe green peppers plopped to the floor of the market with an agonizing squish. Esther struck at the clerks with a whirling elbow. “You want a slap in the balls maybe?”

“Call the cops, man,” the head clerk screamed. Then he recognized Marilyn, who was trying to get between Esther and the clerks. “Your father should come, Señorita Marilyn. This muchacha needs the handcuffs and a pistola in the mouth.”

“I'll pay,” Marilyn screamed into the clerk's bobbing hairline. She saw the foam build on Esther's lip. It was dumb to make an arrest over avocados and green peppers. The girl was either crazy, or starving for fruit. Marilyn grabbed a dollar from her pocketbook. The clerks refused her money. “No, no, Señorita Marilyn.” They released Esther's coat. She stuck her teeth near Marilyn's chin.

“Who asked you for your fucking charity?”

“Loco,” the clerks whispered to themselves. Little crooks like Esther were a common nuisance in their trade. Roaches, ants, dogs, mice, and other predators could destroy your inventory.

Marilyn didn't remain with the clerks; she followed the track of Esther's pea coat. The two girls bumped across Grand Street. “What's your name?” Marilyn asked.

Esther smiled. “Me? I'm Rupertina. I live in the projects. I have eleven brothers, Miss, so help me God. My mother's dead. My father doesn't have a tooth. He licks the gutters for a living. Tell me, is your daddy alive?”

The girl's dire history caused Marilyn to brood. But there was a curious edge to this Rupeitina's voice. “Do you know my father? He's a police inspector. Isaac Sidel.”

Esther had to hold back her pity for Marilyn the Wild. The cunt will be an orphan in twenty hours. “Miss, I never heard of any Isaac.”

Esther jumped onto the sidewalk and scampered away. She wished she had a lollipop embedded in her ski mask. She could bite through the wrapper and get some colored juice on her tongue. The growls in her belly pushed her towards Suffolk Street and Rupert's sour pickles. The dudes from the Seward Park handball courts wouldn't stop pestering her. They were boys with scarves, blue sneakers, and silver posts hanging from their left ears. They had canes with points sharp enough to stab a girl's pockets. “Come on down to the playground with us, little mama. We gonna feast on you.”

Esther growled at the dudes, slapping their canes off her sides. “Don't you know who I am?” she said, ready to grab a silver post and pull on a dude's ear. “I'm Isaac's daughter.”

The boys retrieved their canes. “Honky Isaac?” they said “The Papa Jew?”

“That's him.”

They were suspicious. “What's the big honky's daughter doing in the street without no pants and skirt?”

“I'm coming from a rendezvous.”

“What's that?” the boys demanded of her.

“A religious meeting. With a rabbi. You hold it in a swimming pool. Every month. It washes all your germs.”

The dudes spread apart from Esther; she could contaminate them with her talk of rabbis, germs, and swimming pools.

Esther arrived on Suffolk Street Rupert was waiting on the fourth floor of Esther's tenement with a bottle of ammonia. They went into the room where Esther kept her pot. She relit the Sterno can and poured some ammonia into her soup without thanking the boy. “Pickles,” she said. “Bring me a pickle.”

Rupert brought over his father's jars. While Esther stirred the pot, he fed her sour pickles, grape leaves, and bits of cabbage. She stepped out of her coat, and Rupert had to squint at the wall to keep his mind off the thrust of her ass and the beautiful pull of her ribs. Esther had a frightening concentration. She'd scream at him if he tried to fuck her in the middle of mixing the soup. Rupert saw his limits. He was only the nominal head of the lollipops. The gang's spirit came from Esther. She's the one who planned their forages into the East Side. They would chop up the giant a finger at a time, attack Isaac at the peripheries, nestle in his armpits, slap his appendages down.

Rupert's eyes were burrowing into the wall when he felt a hand inside his coat. Esther had started to undress him. He didn't resist. He took her favors however they happened to come. “I still think Isaac isn't going to drink your soup so fast.”

“Shut up,” she said. His heart beat against the bumps in her palm. Soon they were lying in Esther's coat. This was a fragile boy, with the heartbeat of a captured bird. According to the Sephardic priests, it was sinful to fornicate with Esther on top. Fuck the priests. Esther would invent her own religion. She was in love with a boy who had watched his father nibble at himself for fifteen years. Piecemeal deaths were the ugliest. Rupert caught his father's disease. He couldn't creep out from under Isaac.

Her tongue crowded into Rupert's teeth. She heard the boy snort. She'd have to fatten up his face. It was impossible with Isaac around. Esther meant to win, even if she had to become Isaac's bride. She didn't fret over it. The marriage would be very lean.

Part Three

9.

I
SAAC
arrived at the Neptune Manor on Ocean Parkway in ordinary clothes; he wouldn't retrieve any of his five velvet jackets (champagne yellow, cucumber green, orange, red, and mole gray) from his wife's apartment, up in Riverdale, for the wedding of an old maid. Marilyn refused to come with him, so he had to bring Coen. The “crows” from Barney Rosenblatt's office, who sacrificed their leather pockets for Cowboy and came in sharkskin and rich gabardine, tittered at Isaac's “date.” Coen was in the doghouse, all of them knew; he'd committed the primary sin of romancing Marilyn Sidel.

Isaac and Coen had been put in a corner, far from the wedding table, where Cowboy sat with his oldest daughter, his new son-in-law (a haberdasher with rotten teeth), First Deputy Commissioner O'Roarke, the Chief Inspector, and the PC, together with their wives, and two young deputy mayors, honorable men with sideburns and advanced college degrees, who felt smug in a room filled with cops. Anita Rosenblatt wore a veil that obscured a crooked nose and the long, burrowing chin of her father. The bride was thirty-two. She suffered from falling hair, the result of a nervous condition that left her with a poisoned scalp. Even Isaac, who hated Cowboy, couldn't deny the appeal Anita had in her wedding gown. She survived bald spots and imperfections in her face. Staring at the haberdasher, she had a flush that could swallow any veil, or pinch the sourness off the cheeks of an Irish commissioner.

Anita presided over the smorgasbord. The assistant district attorneys of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens, standing opposite the bride, devoured enormous boats of pickled cabbage. A fountain governed by the figure of Neptune climbing out of the sea (done in silver and gold), spit lemon punch into a basin near Neptune's toes with enough force to drown a baby, or a small dog.

Isaac discovered Herbert Pimloe behind a tray of midget salamis. Only respect for Commissioner O'Roarke, the First Dep, prevented Isaac from shoving a salami down Pimloe's throat. O'Roarke was a sick man. He didn't need to be shamed by his own inspectors at a catered affair. Isaac wedged Pimloe into the salamis without a hint of malice. “Herbert, they tell me Cowboy has a new steerer.”

Pimloe tried to slip outside the smorgasbord. Isaac held him in place with two fingers. Pimloe was reluctant to move. “Isaac, you can't believe everything you hear.”

“Herbert, did Cowboy give you a wedding ring? Or is it an informal engagement?”

Pimloe accommodated Isaac with a toothless smile. The veins in his ears showed red. “Chief, you shouldn't listen to the FBI.”

“Herbert, how much did Cowboy promise? Half the city? Is that what it took to turn you around? Is he giving you Brooklyn, or the Bronx? Herbert, I want to know.”

“Isaac, I didn't screw you, I swear.”

“Pimloe, you told Cowboy where to find Stanley Chin. And don't hand me shit about Newgate. Newgate wouldn't suck Cowboy's nipples. He's got too much pride. It takes a Harvard boy.”

Isaac left Pimloe to brood against the moist skins of the salamis. His anger was mostly counterfeit. The Chief couldn't blame a quiff for trying to improve himself. Herbert played the percentages. He had to figure Cowboy was a better rabbi than O'Roarke. Why should Pimloe attach his badge and his pants to a dying commissioner?

Isaac marched to the wedding table. He might bang shoulders with Barney, but he wouldn't insult the bride. He kissed Anita under the veil, wishing her a long and happy marriage in spite of the feuds at Headquarters. The veil rubbed Isaac's nose. He could feel the stiff corseting of her gown. He prayed Anita wouldn't lose her haberdasher-husband. He knew all about daughters who had a talent for wiggling away from their men. Thinking of Marilyn brought Isaac back to Coen. He'd rather have her single than see her with Blue Eyes. Coen made a perfect cop. Without brains, or ambition, he was utterly reliable. What could he offer Marilyn except those damn blue eyes?

Under the cold, rabbity gaze of the Police Commissioner and his wife, who shoveled potato salad into their mouths as they scrutinized each wedding guest, Isaac was obliged to shake Cowboy's fist. “Luck,” Isaac said, smiling into the ruffles of a sleeve. Cowboy welcomed Isaac with the scorn and panoply of a master pimp. He wore a midnight-blue ensemble, with a silk cravat, a cummerbund, and trousers wider than a skirt; his rank, “Chief of Detectives,” was filigreed on cufflinks made of speckled pearl. Cowboy had dropped thirteen thousand dollars to capture a hall big enough to launch his balding daughter, and he'd hang himself with the magnificent drapes in the PC's office (installed by Teddy Roosevelt seventy years ago), before he allowed Isaac to muck up his one day of glory. He'd made certain that Isaac and his boyfriend were exiled to a table practically inside the kitchen, so that the reek of chicken fat could remind them of their low station. Blue Eyes disgusted him even more than Isaac did. It was pretty boys like Coen who had toyed with Barney's girl, disappointing Anita again and again until Cowboy had to act He produced a bridegroom for Anita, a fifty-eight-year-old merchant without any merchandise, a bachelor with incredible dental bills, an orphan hungry for a father-in-law who could bully detectives in all five boroughs. Barney found a niche for him on Schermerhom Street, a crack in the wall two pushcarts deep, and turned this orphan into a haberdasher. The Chief of Detectives couldn't have his oldest daughter in bed with a propertyless man.