Marilyn the Wild (15 page)

Marilyn could only relax after Isaac and his “fiancée” went to work. Then she had Rivington Street to herself. She would bathe in the afternoon, scratch her fingernails, consider the veins in her hand. She missed Blue-Eyes. But if she connived behind her father's back and rushed uptown to Coen, she'd ruin his chances with Isaac and the First Dep. Marilyn sensed her father's vindictiveness. Isaac was jealous of Coen.

As Isaac's bachelor daughter, she shared the toilet with an old man across the hall. This old man hogged the facilities. A bachelor himself, he despised any woman who peed sitting down. Marilyn had to flush the toilet after him; he was much too squeamish to touch the plunger attached to the water box. She might have avoided the bachelor altogether if he had bothered to close the toilet door. He would sit with his pants bunched around a nail over his head, bang his raw knees with a fist, and sing outrageous songs through the door, courtship songs, Marilyn imagined, because of the bachelor's feverish intonation. She had no other clue. The songs wouldn't cohere into a language Marilyn understood; he seemed to chirp scraps of English, Yiddish, and Hungarian. Marilyn had little desire to tease out their intent.

This morning, desperate to pee, she stumbled into the toilet. She swerved to miss colliding with the bachelor's knees. Her bosoms struck the wall. “Christ,” she said. He sat clicking his teeth, with an incredible red prick that rose out of his belly to serenade an Irish-Jewish girl. Marilyn wanted Coen.

Not even the PC could get Isaac away from his desk. His subordinates were baffled by Isaac's foul mood. A lollipop who sabotaged herself couldn't hurt im. saac was a hero. Hadn't he survived Esther's homemade bombs, concoctions in mayonnaise jars? What did the Chief have to mourn?

Isaac sat for hours without a sign of slackness in his heavy cheeks. He wouldn't humor his men. They were part of the rubber-gun squad, former “angels” of Isaac's who had suffered the ultimate humiliation: they had their .45s snatched from them by the PC because of overzealousness in the street. The medical bureau accused them of being trigger crazy. They'd shot off too many noses, it seems. Now they clerked for Isaac. They were sensitive to each little shift in Isaac's character, to his porcupine scalp, those rigid patches behind his ears that betrayed his anxiousness. What could the Chief be waiting for?

The phone rang around three in the afternoon. The rubber-gun squad watched Isaac's scalp unbridle; these men had grown psychic about the noises a telephone could make. Isaac put his tongue near the mouthpiece. “Hello?”

“Is this Isaac the Pure?”

The air blew out of Isaac's cheeks, leaving them soft.

“I'm calling about Esther Rose. You killed her, you pimp. She brought you soup, and you had to throw her on top of a shithill.”

“Some soup,” Isaac said. “It came in a funny jar. Rupert, where are you?”

“Wouldn't you like to know? Isaac, did she cry when you tortured her? Or did she spit in your policeman's face?”

“Rupert, we have to talk. I'll meet you anywhere you say.”

The rubber-gun boys were scrambling to monitor Rupert's call. The Chief warned them away from the sound equipment with a wag of his jaw. They couldn't believe Isaac would cow to a lollipop.

“Was it the pretty blond detective who took care of Esther's arm? I'll fix him too.”

“Blue Eyes? He never saw Esther Rose. Rupert, stay off the street. Some grim Italian boys are looking for you.”

“Isaac, you trying to hold me while your technicians trace me to a telephone booth? Forget about it. I'm signing off.”

“You're overrating us, Rupert. The FBI untangles wires, not us. We're primitive men.”

“You'll be primitive sooner than you think. I'll play with your jawbone. I'll soak your teeth in pickled water. I'll send your guts to Headquarters, C.O.D. You'll be remembered, Isaac. You'll wish to God you hadn't fucked with Esther. Goodbye.”

Isaac held a cold telephone in his lap. The rubber-gun squad shied away from him. The Chief was in the middle of a brainstorm. The medical examiner and the fingerprint boys who dusted the mayonnaise jars had given him nothing beyond the fact of Esther's immolation. Isaac had to scratch with his thumbs. Careless girls don't leave their coats under a sink. Esther's nakedness cut into the easy theory of an accidental death. Did she love to finger bombs without her clothes? Who'd believe a girl would want to die with Isaac? He hoped Rupert would reveal Esther to him. The boy's instructions were slow. Rupert turned Isaac into a murderer.

He'd sent Coen deep into Brooklyn to interview Esther's family. Coen barely got out alive. The Spagnuolos cursed him and attacked him with their fingernails. They disclaimed any knowledge of Esther. Isaac wasn't satisfied. He'd dealt with stranger Jews than these. Hadn't he made the tzaddik of Williamsburg smile? He'd danced with Hasidim in a synagogue that was bigger than a soccer field. So Isaac went searching for Esther. He took Brodsky along. Isaac wouldn't have sought company in Manhattan or the Bronx, where he could determine any street with his nose. But Brooklyn was a second Arabia, uncrossable for Isaac without a limousine, a desert of contradicting neighborhoods, murderous, soft, with pockets of air that could drive chills through a cop's sturdy drawers. Isaac found Esther's people in a block of private houses near Gravesend and Coney Island Creek. He wasn't invited inside. A man in a skullcap who could have been Esther's father, uncle, or older brother (his twitching eyebrows and pendulous ears made his age impossible to tell) came out to greet Isaac with a butcher knife. Isaac backed off the sidewalk, disenchanted with Sephardic Jews. He signaled to Brodsky, wiggling at Manhattan with a fist.

Now he was calling for Brodsky again. Isaac wanted the morgue at Bellevue. The rubber-gun squad crammed his raincoat with a fresh supply of pencils (the Chief liked to scribble on his rides with Brodsky). The chauffeur had a glum look. He preferred to keep away from hospitals and morgues. Isaac wasn't trying to push Brodsky towards a ghoulish medical examiner. The Chief was after Esther's body. The Spagnuolos had left her in a city icebox, unclaimed. If the Hands of Esau refused to bury a Jewish lollipop on society grounds (Barney Rosenblatt had the power to stall Isaac's request), he would fish for a grave out of his own pocket, a grave with a legitimate marker.

The morgue attendant was coy with Isaac. He swore on his life that Esther had disappeared. “Isaac, you have the authority. Tear down the walls. The coroner's afraid of the First Dep. But you won't find shit. The girl was picked up.”

“Did they row her out to Ward's Island on the paupers' run?”

The thought of Esther being dumped in a potter's field maddened Isaac. It was gruesome to him. A grave would be turned out every ten or twenty years to accommodate a different crop of bones.

The attendant smiled. “Isaac, it wasn't Ward's Island. Somebody signed for her.”

“Show me the release, you scumbag.”

The attendant returned with a long card.

“Was it a relative?” Isaac muttered.

“No, it says ‘admirer.'”

“What's the admirer's name? … could it be Rupert?”

The attendant squinted at the card. “Isaac, it aint so clear. One word. It begins with a Z.”

“Zorro,” Brodsky said, with sudden illumination, his chin in the attendant's shoulder.

The attendant curled his eyes. “Isaac, you can't trick the morgue. Who's Zorro?”

“One of the Guzmann boys.” The cemetery was in Bronxville, where the Guzmanns had a family plot. Checking with another attendant, Isaac discovered that Zorro Guzmann had snatched Esther's body only two hours ago. He rushed out of the morgue.

Brodsky fumbled behind the Chief. “Isaac, it makes no sense. What could the Guzmanns do with a lollipop? Are they planning to revive her? Will they sell her in the street?”

A tribe of Marranos from Peru, pickpockets, thieves, and pimps, the Guzmanns had settled in the Bronx, becoming the policy bankers of Boston Road; they thrived amid Latinos, poor Irishers, blacks, and ancient Jews. Isaac hadn't concerned himself with their penny plays. But the tribe was beginning to infest Manhattan. The Guzmanns would kidnap young girls from the Port Authority and auction them to local whorehouses. Isaac meant to squeeze the tribe out of his borough. The lollipops were slowing him down. He could no longer concentrate on grubby pimps.

The chauffeur took him to Bronxville. The Guzmann burial ground was a hummock of frozen grass. Three old men stood shivering over a fresh scar in the hummock. They were expert mourners. The Guzmanns had hired them to wail for Esther. They wore the caftans of a chief rabbi, only each of them came with a pectoral cross. Zorro was with them, in a checkered overcoat. Brodsky nudged the Chief with a loud cackle. “Isaac, should I throw him down the hill? Let these old men mourn for Zorro while they're here. One tap on the head, and you can close the Guzmann case. Zorro won't have a brain left.”

Isaac pointed to a man on the other side of the hummock, a man without Zorro's penchant for clothes; he had earmuffs from a Bronx variety store, a scarf as mottled as a hankie, a thickness of sweaters, overalls that ballooned in the seat and stopped just below the calf, galoshes that wouldn't buckle. His nostrils were flat, and he had a forehead that was uncommonly wide.

“Do me a favor, Brodsky. Whisper your threats from now on. That's Jorge over there. Zorro's big brother. Bullets can't touch him. He has elephant skin. He'll shovel dirt in our eyes if we move on Zorro. So be nice.”

Isaac walked up to Zorro Guzmann (César was his baptismal name) without a hand in his pocket, so Jorge wouldn't misinterpret Isaac's peaceful signs and come galloping down the hummock with squeaky galoshes and his earmuffs askew. Zorro had mud on his pigskin shoes. His coat of many colors turned orange in the afternoon. Isaac tried not to stare at Zorro's dainty feet.

“Zorro, since when does Papa interest himself in the affairs of a Yeshiva girl? Brooklyn isn't your borough.”

“Isaac, you calling my father illiterate? He reads the
Daily News.
The girl's a Ladina, isn't she? You think my father's going to allow her to sleep in an unholy grave? Not when she's a Spanish Jew. You see those criers on the hill? The holy men. They've been cursing Esther's mother and father since two o'clock.”

“That's a touching story, but are you sure Papa isn't sanctifying Esther because she tried to murder me?”

“Isaac, don't blaspheme in a graveyard. My father's a religious man. He doesn't care if you live or die.”

“Good for him. Zorro, I respect your family. I never interfered with Guzmann business on Boston Road. So take the wax out of your ear. Manhattan's not for you. The cockroaches have a nasty sting.”

“Isaac, I can't even spell Manhattan. Why would I go there to live?”

Isaac was finished with obligatory advice. He had plans to shred Zorro's spectacular coat He would push the Guzmanns into a sewer once he caught those fish in Manhattan.

“César, aren't you going to ask me about Blue Eyes?”

Zorro dug the earth with the pigskin on his feet “Don't say blue. Blue is a filthy color in my religion. Isaac, teach yourself some history. All the magistrates used to wear blue cloaks in Portugal and Spain six hundred years ago. Can't you figure? A dark color could prevent the stink of a Jew from poisoning their armpits.”

“Did your father tell you that?”

“No, I learnt it from my brothers.”

Zorro's four brothers, Alejandro, Topal, Jorge, and Jerónimo, were Bronx wisemen who couldn't read the letters off a street sign, or manage the intricacies of a revolving door. Jerónimo, the oldest, slept in a crib.

“César, you still haven't asked me about Coen?”

“There's nothing to ask. Manfred flew from Papa's candy store. He made his nest with you.”

Coen had been raised on Boston Road, where Papa Guzmann maintained his empire under the cover of egg creams and soft candy. It was Papa who shoved Coen's parents towards suicide, controlling them with little gifts of money until the miserable egg store they had came into Papa's hands.

Zorro edged away from Isaac. He was in Bronxville at his father's bidding, to put an unwanted Ladina under frozen grass, with three Christian rabbis in attendance, hovering over the Guzmanns' sacred mound. “Isaac, this is a funeral. I can't talk no more.”

Isaac trudged with Brodsky down from the cemetery. The chauffeur spied at Jorge Guzmann from the corner of his sleeve; he was baffled that a moron with open galoshes could frighten the Chief.

“Please, Isaac, lemme pop this Jorge once behind the ear. We'll see what flows out, water, piss, or blood.”

The Chief closed Brodsky's face with a horrible scowl. He wasn't looking for company. He sat at the back of the car. He could have taken off Brodsky's lip with the heat spilling from both his eyes. “Esther,” he muttered. He was sick of a world of lollipops.