Marilyn the Wild (27 page)

The Chief had a gift waiting for him at Centre Street: a special edition of
The Toad.
Isaac's mug was on the cover, with the word “ASSASSIN” in boldface and the by-line of Tony Brill. Brodsky and the rubber-gun squad couldn't hide the covers from Isaac. Barney's men swarmed through Headquarters, from the basement to the giant cupola over the PC's rooms, stuffing
The Toad
into every available corner.

“Garbage,” Brodsky announced, after reading Tony Brill.
The Toad
accused Isaac, in wavering margins and blotchy ink, of mounting a “death campaign” against Rupert Weil and the children of New York. “Who's next?” Tony Brill screamed from the second page. “How many of us will have to give up our sons and daughters to the Behemoth at Police Headquarters? Will we all land inside the Blue Whale?”

“Pure shit,” Brodsky told the Chief. “Isaac, should I break his feet?” The chauffeur realized the absurdity of his threat. Tony Brill was unapproachable now. The rumor at Headquarters was that Brill had jumped from
The Toad
to
Time
magazine.

“Brodsky,” Isaac said, “go scratch yourself. I'm busy.” He made Brodsky close the door. The Chief had something to do. If he concentrated on the Guzmanns, he wouldn't have to think about Marilyn the Wild. So he planned his next assault The Guzmanns were immune to First Deputy snares. Jorge had forks in his earmuffs that could sniff a handgun out of girdles and brassieres. Isaac wouldn't use ordinary spies. He'd have to place a cop in deep, deep undercover. Who would go into the Bronx to poison the Guzmanns' black halvah? Brodsky? Coen? Cowboy Rosenblatt? Isaac was in a fix. He had nobody to send. Marilyn crept into that country between Isaac's walls. He couldn't fish her out of the room.

The rubber-gun squad stood with their chins near Isaac's door. They were cursing Tony Brill and tearing Isaac's picture off the covers of
The Toad.
“Shhh,” Brodsky said. “You want to disturb the boss? He's thinking in there.”

Marilyn the Wild had gone to Port Authority. She sat by herself on the uppermost deck of the terminal, hunched against her suitcase. She had hours to kill before the next crosscountry bus. She roosted a quarter of a mile from the escalators, in an isolated spot. The prospect of company, male or female, could make her nauseous. She'd spill her guts on the wall if she had to explain her flight from three husbands, blintzes, and her father. She didn't want to say “Isaac.”

A dude in vinyl buckskin spotted Marilyn on his fourth stroll through the terminal. This dude went by the name of Henry. The sweep of Marilyn's stockings couldn't turn him on. Henry was interested in her suitcase. He'd swiped a Polaroid in the morning, and a silk umbrella; with Marilyn's stuff, he could visit his Jew on Thirty-seventh Street and collect a twenty. He'd fallen in love with a hat in Ohrbach's window.

“Hiya, sweet potato,” he said, sitting down next to the suitcase. Marilyn's scowls couldn't pull him away. Henry wondered if the girl was a “pros.” Who else would rest on a balcony with one foot off the ground? Only a whore. She had adorable knees, a strong Irish face, with bumps under her coat where her tits ought to be. Somebody owns this broad. Suppose it was Zorro, the Bronx spic, who had pimping rights at every bus station in New York. Henry could get his ears chopped off. The Guzmanns weren't human. They came from a forest in Peru. If you tampered with their women, they would bite your nose and leave parts of you in a paper bag. It was a risk Henry had to take.

First he'd explore a little. “Are you a friend of Zorro, sweetheart?” The whore wouldn't answer him. “Are you Guzmann merchandise?” Henry felt safer now. He snatched the suitcase, shouting, “See you, baby,” and ran for the stairs, because the fucking escalators were too far away.

Marilyn stayed on the bench without crying “Thief.” She wasn't so attached to a pile of underpants. She'd get another pair when the bus stopped in Chicago. Unencumbered, she could travel with a toothbrush in her pocket. She began to doze.

Dreaming, she saw a buckskin suit, a thief with dangling legs. She didn't have to touch her cheeks. The suitcase was near her toes. A man was lugging Henry by the nape of his fake buckskin collar. Blue Eyes. She could have strangled him with affection if that thief hadn't been around. She was dying to lick behind his ears.

Coen was sheepish with her. “Marilyn, I snuck out of Bellevue. I have forty minutes. Stanley is covering for me. I figured you'd be here. But I wouldn't have gotten to you without this glom. I noticed what he was carrying.”

“Manfred, there's a million suitcases like mine.”

“That's true. But how many of them have purple underpants sticking out of the side?”

They laughed, while Henry had a crick in his neck. He assumed Coen was a gorilla who worked for Zorro. He stuck his fingers in his chest and prayed. He'd heard that in spite of Peru the Guzmanns were religious people. Would they send a priest for him before they peeled his face?

“Marilyn, should I let him go? He led me to you, didn't he? And if I pinch him, we won't have any time for ourselves.”

Marilyn wasn't greedy. She kissed Henry on the forehead and thanked him for bringing Coen. Henry creased his lips into a quarter smile. Then he galloped towards the escalators. After Coen he couldn't trust the stairs.

Marilyn fumbled with Blue Eyes, her arms inside his camel's hair coat, her teeth knocking into his jaw. The cop didn't resist. He had most of her blouse in his hand. Marilyn kicked off her shoes and wiggled out of her skirt. She would have pulled Coen down on the bench with her, but the cop became suspicious. “Marilyn, there are Port Authority detectives running around. They could snitch on us to Isaac.”

“Who cares about snitchers?”

Coen spied an alcove about twenty feet behind Marilyn. It was the entrance to an abandoned toilet. He picked up skirt, blouse, and suitcase. Marilyn carried her shoes. The alcove was narrow, and they had nowhere to lie down. Marilyn leaned into a dirty wall. Coen's pants dropped to his knees. Their bellies met under the coats. “Blue Eyes,” she said. Soon her mumbling was indistinct.

Taped to a moveable bedboard, a hospital boat with wheels, Rupert stared up at his father and Mordecai, the two shabby princes of Essex Street. He couldn't say papa, or mouth welcomes to Mordecai. Falling off Isaac's fire escape, he'd landed on his neck and lost the power of speech. He wasn't dumb to his father's words. Only Mordecai kept interrupting Philip.

“Rupert, listen to us. No cocksucker cop can get into your room again. There's a guard outside with a gun. If that's not enough, me and your father will sit with you. We'll stop Isaac next time. Rupert, yon want some orange juice? Just wiggle your chin.”

Rupert's chin was encased in thick swads of gauze. A nurse had shaved his skull, and wrapped him in a hundred feet of bandage. He didn't have one free toe.

“Moron,” Philip said. “How can he signal for juice?”

The princes began to bicker. A team of nurses drove them out of the room. Mordecai scratched his knee. Rupert watched the hunched lines of his father's back. Candy stripes on a twenty-dollar shirt couldn't hide the bumps under Philip's shoulder blade. Rupert screamed inside his head. So long, papa. So long, Mordecai. He'd have to mother these two men. They had gray tufts behind the ears: neither of them was a grandfather yet. Mordecai walked with bent knees. Philip had a crooked neck from the years he'd given to crouching on Essex Street. Rupert would take his father out of Isaac's territories. They'd ride the currents on Third Avenue in Rupert's hospital boat. They'd settle in a different part of the borough (Philip would die without a few yards of Manhattan). They'd send for Mordecai. The three of them would make war on the pimps who were holding Honey. Then Rupert would bounce upstairs on his bedboard and pluck Stanley Chin out of the prisoners' ward. The cops would scream for the big Jew. Rupert wouldn't care. Isaac didn't exist above Delancey Street.

Rupert's bliss began to fail. How could he pull Esther out of the ground? Clay in her ears wouldn't bring her alive. His groin was shrewder than miles of bandage. Bellevue, Isaac, and the mummy's bag they'd wrapped him in couldn't stop his erection from pushing through the gauze. He was crying without a pinch of water in his eyes. These weren't a mourner's brittle tears. His hunger for Esther Rose couldn't be quieted with a doctor's needle, or sugar in his veins.

From time to time an intern would appear and marvel at the broken boy and his erection. The boy's nurses could see the swelling in the gauze. They giggled among themselves. “Practically unconscious and he gets it up.” Rupert would growl at them behind immobile cheeks. Where's Mordecai? Where's my dad? And when they flipped him over, spanked his thighs to lessen the possibility of bed sores, Rupert would hiss through his nose. Ladies, you can't kill a lollipop.

The door opened. He expected orderlies in filthy green coats to change the tubes and pans under his bed. He saw mittens in a wheelchair and a sad-faced cop. It was Blue Eyes and Stanley Chin. Rupert smiled without untightening his lips. The cop was reticent. He wouldn't approach the bed-board. “Tell him,” Stanley pleaded. “Can't you tell him?”

Coen dangled an arm behind the wheelchair. “Didn't mean to chase you in the storm … you shouldn't have climbed for the roof … the Chief's got a tricky fire escape. Rupert, I'm sorry.”

The cop was silent again. Rupert didn't have to look very hard. The storm wasn't over for Blue Eyes; flecks of color exploded around Coen's enormous pupils. Where's Lady Marilyn? Coen was as sad as Mordecai. Mummified, stuck to a bedboard, he was glad he hadn't spooned blood out of Marilyn's neck. Coen could use her kisses.

“Rupe,” Stanley said, grazing the mummy with plaster on his fist. “The bulls can't keep us apart Shit, Mr. Coen snuck me down here. I'm not supposed to have visiting rights.”

Rupert laughed underneath the canals of his nose. He could no longer feel the distant points of his body. He existed without fingers, elbows, or the blades of his knees. He had eyes, ears, and a sensitive prick. He couldn't laugh with his kneecaps, or get his belly to shake. His tongue lay dead. But he was grateful to Blue Eyes for bringing Stanley. He'd roll tongues in the back of his head. Clap out a dozen words. Stanley, we'll mend together. We'll grow new hands. We'll flood Bellevue with Isaac's songs.

The boys couldn't scrape their bandages in private. Nurses charged into the room. They had swollen red skin. “What do you mean, Detective Coen? Rupert Weil can't have any guests. Take your prisoner upstairs.”

He heard the rattle of handlebars, the grunt of wheels, and he was in a world without Blue Eyes and Stanley Chin. The nurses grabbed his bedboard. They rotated him between their elbows, so Rupert couldn't fall. His erection was gone. His cheeks wobbled against the gauze. He was beginning to feel his knees again. The nurses put him back. “Rest,” they said, as they hustled away from him. They screamed at the guard who had been assigned to Rupert by the children's court. “No one gets through this door. Not even the Chief of Police.”

Rupert dreamed with an eye on the wall. There were shouts and sputters in the corridor. He saw patches of Philip and Mordecai. The two princes from Essex Street were arguing with nurses, doctors, orderlies, and Rupert's guard. “Are you crazy?” Mordecai said. “This is the boy's father. We want some satisfaction, please. We'll crush your lungs if we can't get in.” A hole formed in the wedge of nurses' uniforms. The princes slipped through. They arrived at the bedboard. Rupert didn't have the capacity to wink at them. Papa, he said. Papa and Mordecai.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.