Marilyn the Wild (24 page)

Brian Connell shouldn't have budged from the station-house. No one would have blamed him for sleeping in the locker room during a hard snow. But he had to redeem himself. He undressed the big Jew's daughter, fed her whiskey in a bar, fucked her, and sent her home to Blue Eyes. The cunt had snitched on him. She cried rape, rape, and now the First Dep's killer squads were gunning for Brian Connell. How do you duck an “angel” with a sharpshooter's ribbon? Brian had one means of escape: catch little Rupert before Isaac takes his revenge.

He'd been stalking Rupert's grounds, from Clinton to West Broadway, in Bowery clothes that were beginning to rot. He had a few appendages today; a silk scarf that he wore on his face, and hunter's boots from Abercrombie's to protect his delicate ankles from snowbite. The wind imposed hallucinations on him. Rabbits were crossing Grand Street. It had to be devil's work, or a mirage caused by the particular slant of falling snow. He kept a medallion in his pocket from the Holy Name society. But rubbing a piece of cold metal couldn't scare the rabbits away. They would come and go between the nod of an eyelash. Brian was terrified. He'd have to surrender his body to a Catholic nursing home, or move out of the state. Run to Delaware and join his cousins on a skunk farm.

He couldn't ignore the squabbling in the snow. There was a rooster near his legs. This was no pale beast, fickled over by a storm. The rooster had wattles and a red hat. Brian chased after the stupid bird; it rushed between his Abercrombie boots. He flopped in the snow, unable to keep up with a chicken. He noticed a man skulking on the opposite side of Grand Street. Brian drew his gun. The man was trying to stuff the rabbits in a shopping bag. Brian called to him. “Sonny boy, stay where you are.”

The man hurled the shopping bag; a rabbit flew out. Brian fired over the man's ears to prove that you couldn't throw shopping bags at a city cop. A hill collapsed behind the thief. “Come out with your hands in the sky.”

He heard a loud slapping noise. His own hill of snow was disintegrating under his boots. The thief had a gun in his hand. Brian dove into the tires of an abandoned truck. He squinted around the tires to shoot at the rabbit thief. He could feel dull, trembling pocks in the snow. The guy had to be holding a cannon on him, or a Detective Special. Nothing else could make holes like that. The man was waving a yellowy object. Brian shuddered when he recognized the indentations of a gold shield. “Prick,” the man said, coming out of the snow. “I'm from the Second Division. Who the hell are you?”

Brian was too weary to sniffle. The sergeant would slap his eyes with paper work. Brian would be typing forms in triplicate until his fingers dropped off, explaining why he had the urge to blow skin off a detective's ears. They'd flop him for sure. And Isaac had all the authority in the world to kidnap Brian, feed him to the rat squad, who would nibble on his ears, suck his lifeblood away, sneak him out of the borough, and deliver him to Ward's Island in a box, before the snow disappeared. The property clerk would claim his Smith & Wesson. Brian could look forward to a wet grave, and the anonymity of a policeman buried without his gun.

“Are you nuts?” the rabbit thief said, shaking Brian out of his gloomy visions. “You shoot at a man for finding pets in the street? Bunnies are dumb. They could die in Manhattan. I was bringing them out to Islip, for my lads.”

Brian shrugged. “Dangerous,” he said. “Lollipops … I'm looking for Rupert Weil.”

All things returned to Isaac. Isaac was the freezing river, the rock, the snow. Isaac was the sewer under Grand Street, the snot in Philip's handkerchief, the dust on the wings of Mordecai's nose. Isaac was the holy warrior who swept Philip and Mordecai under with his good deeds and gutted Esther Rose, who sleeps in the vulva of his daughter and gets his nourishment from the pubic hair of a fat blintze queen.…

Two men were following Rupert while he speculated in the snow. These weren't the Mulberry goons. They didn't have long overcoats. They were dressed like foreigners, it seemed to Rupert, in softer clothes: sweaters, earmuffs, and wool hats. It was hard to appraise their look in a storm, but Rupert could swear they were brothers. Their faces had a cunning that didn't respond to the snowbound shops of Grand Street. The brothers might be slow in commercial matters, in geography and arithmetic; they walked with a mental twitch, as if they were moving into strange territories. They couldn't be connected to Isaac; they were much too awkward for a team of cops.

Rupert didn't bother trying to shake them; he'd ride under their fists, if he had to. He'd wrap the earmuffs around their eyes. He'd bite the wool on their heads. They couldn't grab Rupert off the snow. He cut into Allen Street, but the wind drove him back. He had to burrow with his knees, dig his way around the corner. The trip exhausted him. He winked at the sweater boys, whose tits were covered with snow. Woolly heads were no match for Rupert Weil. He had a spoon in his pocket, a spoon that could gouge a path to Lady Marilyn, or splinter the cheeks of an enemy. He revived, watching the earmuffs labor. The brothers were stuck. They couldn't make Allen Street. Rupert dismissed them as Brooklyn refugees. He was clear to move at a pace that was convenient for him. He had ice on his toes, and his nipples had turned blue. He put a hundred yards of crawling between himself and the refugees. He fell over a hand. “What is this shit?” A foot wiggled out of the snow. Rupert pulled. An old man emerged, hugging bits of snow to his body. He'd been buried alive, without galoshes or a scarf. Rupert rubbed the old man against his coat. “Who are you? Where do you live?”

The old man pointed to a building. “I was going for a knish,” he said. “A kasha knish. It's foggy out. I can't see.”

“Do you have a wife?” Rupert asked.

“I live with my daughter. The knish was for her.”

“This aint knish weather, if you ask me. All the delicatessens are closed. Come on.”

The storm had tailored the old man's building, cutting it off from its own ground floor with a snowbank that was humped up like an elephant's back. Rupert charged into the hump, searching for an entrance to the building. He slapped out a crooked furrow with his hands and feet, and brought the old man inside. The building was chillier than the snowbank. “That's a greedy girl,” Rupert said, huffing for warm air. “I'd kasha her nose for her, but I'm in a hurry.”

Coming out of the furrow he'd made, he was snatched up by four long overcoats. His enemies, the gorillas of Mulberry Street, had been waiting for him. They spotted Rupert as he stalled to unbury the old man. They banged his arms with their lead pipes, menaced his eyes with their plumber's snake. “Go quiet, little pest, or we'll divide you into twenty packages. You have an appointment with Amerigo Genussa.”

Rupert struggled in the snow, unable to reach his can opener, fork, or spoon. The plumber's snake ripped into his eyebrow. He was sneezing blood. He had pipes in his shoulder-blades. The refugees arrived, the sweater boys, the brothers wrapped in earmuffs and childish hats. Was it snow, or blood, that was beguiling Rupert? How could four gorillas be off their feet? Only one brother battled with them. Pipes bounced off the head of this refugee. He could tear a whirling metal snake with his fingers. Take two gorillas into his chest with a single arm. Hug the color out of a man's face. Rupert heard the crunch of bone under the long coats. The four gorillas had rubbery knees. They twitched and groaned near the second brother, who said, “Jorge, that's enough.”

He attended to Rupert's eye with spit on a paper napkin. “I'm César Guzmann. Some people call me Zorro. That's my brother Jorge. Don't blink. You'll get snow in your eye.”

“Why are you following me?” Rupert said, growing surly.

Zorro pecked at the blood. “Be polite. I don't care for myself. But you'll offend my brother. The good fairy sent us to watch out for you.”

“I fight with my own elbows, Mr. Zorro, thank you. I'm Rupert Weil.”

“We know that,” Zorro said, finishing with the napkin. “We buried your lady, Esther Rose. My father hired two cantors to sing at her funeral. The best songs you can find in Latin and Portuguese.”

Rupert peered out of his bloody eye. “What was Esther to you?”

“A Ladina without a decent grave. Nothing more. We had a friend in common. Big Isaac. He should be in the ground, not your lady.”

The gorillas slithered away from Rupert and the Guzmann boys, with lumps in their overcoats.

“See,” Zorro said. “It pays to keep you healthy. Could you torture Isaac if they took your elbows off?”

The Guzmanns were delicate people. Zorro wouldn't have introduced himself without bearing trinkets from his family; he stuck a hand through the neck of his bottommost sweater, his fingers moving like giant pimples under the wool, and dragged up an ice pick and a tiny handgun in a square of dirty cheesecloth. “My father wants you to have a choice. You can dig into Isaac, or blow his tongue away. Don't worry about the pistola. It can't be traced. It bites hard for a .22. Drop it near Isaac's feet and run.”

Rupert shrugged at the offerings. “I have my tools, Mr. Zorro.” Were the Guzmanns out of their minds? He couldn't keep from staring at the refugees, who walked into a storm bundled up like chubby snow gods to rescue him from a pack of goons. “Are you a Brooklyn boy, Mr. Zorro?”

“Never,” Zorro said, making grim pulls with his chin. “We come from Peru. Remember, you have a place to hide. My father can get you into Mexico City, Bogota, Lima, or the ten Little Havanas in the East Bronx. Just ride the train to Boston Road and ask for me.”

He signaled to Jorge. The brothers fixed their earmuffs and went into the snow with shuffling knees.

Coen had feathers in his mouth from Isaac's mushy pillow. Marilyn wouldn't let him out of bed. He was unbridled now, minus his holster and his socks. The blizzard had simplified their lives; no interruptions from Isaac for thirty-six hours. Rattling fire escapes couldn't frighten her with Blue Eyes in the house. She licked him clean, until he lost the nervous shivers of a cop. She wasn't a dreamy girl. She understood Coen's obligations, his loyalty to her father, his somber ways. She hadn't slept with too many orphans before Coen. She wouldn't have believed a man could hold his dead father and mother in the furrows of his chin. He had a deathly feel. His lovemaking was profoundly beautiful and slow. He didn't spit. He didn't nibble on her ear with an obscene patter, like her second husband, and her early beaus. He moved in her with the rhythms of a somnambulist, a drugged devotion that pinned her to the walls of Isaac's flimsy mattress and made her squeal.

She felt like Isaac, who could taste paradise every night by putting his nose in a honey jar. That's how greedy she got with Coen. She wanted him to nuzzle her until her orgasms traveled to her fingers and her eyes. “Mother God,” she said, thrown back to her church days when she had to confess the crime of liking to touch her own bosoms. “Make me come, Manfred, make me come.”

At rare intervals she'd climb off the mattress to fix a meal for Blue Eyes and herself; she clawed into the heart of her father's lettuce, dropping chunks onto a plate, with cucumbers and a dip of garlic, onions, and cottage cheese. Marilyn was worried about the blandness of this feast She couldn't vary the menu in a blizzard. It was cottage cheese, or starve, because the refrigerator had been stocked by Ida Stutz. But there was a little red wine in a goosenecked bottle, and they sipped at it judiciously, conserving the bottle, in case they had a visitor. Isaac might come through the window; he had a passion for fire escapes, and he hated climbing stairs. Let her father fly in! Marilyn wouldn't blush. She was old enough to be caught naked with a man. Isaac must have seen her tits once or twice during the short tenures she'd had with her three husbands. He didn't complain. Marilyn wasn't her father's deputy. She'd sit him on the window if he badgered husband Coen.