Bitter Bronx (20 page)

“Tiny,” he said, “you're a thief.”

Batista was standing in front of Gorman's building on Minford Place with a coterie of friends. The crinkle had gone out of his eyes. He'd been working for Gorman ever since he was seventeen.

“Wait a second, Mr. G. I'm with my hombres. They don't have to listen . . .”

He began to paw at the prince of paper bags, playing with him like a disgruntled bear. The cops leapt from their patrol car and clubbed Tiny to the ground with their nightsticks while Gorman looked into the little girl's eyes. She wasn't sobbing. And she didn't have the fear and trembling of a child. Her brow had wrinkled up, and she seemed to mourn Mr. G. with all the sadness and wisdom of the oldest woman in the world, as if he'd broken through some boundary from which he could never return.

“But it happened years ago,” I said. “Why should it suddenly start to haunt you?”

“I don't know,” the horse farmer said under his fake Mickey Mantle cap.

“And what would you like me to do?”

“You'll never find her. She could be a grandma by now.”

“Stop it! She can't be more than thirty-five. What was her name?”

“Little Alice.”

And he was bawling again. I left him there on his verandah and caught the next flight from Santa Fe. The wizards at Burnside, Ebel & Gold punched in Orlando “Tiny” Batista, and we had a printout in five minutes. Batista was a “ghost” in their parlance. He died in 1983. Whatever wife he'd had didn't possess a Social Security number. And there was nothing on Little Alice.

“Come on, guys. A girl can't just disappear.”

“Ricky, she's even more of a ghost than her old man.”

But my guys uncovered a site devoted to an obscure little rag published several times a year.
Back In the Bronx
. We subscribed to the journal. I tore through every page. There was a lot about the Bronx Bombers, but nothing about a grown-up little girl from Minford Place.
Back In the Bronx
did have a classified section, which was one long lonely hearts club, with retirees in Tucson or Boca Raton looking for an old sweetie or swain. And that's where we decided to strike. I wrote the entry, like some heartless left-hander delivering his best curve.

LOOKING FOR LITTLE ALICE, DAUGHTER OF ORLANDO BATISTA,

formerly of Minford Place. Prepared to pay a handsome

reward. Please contact Ricardo Rosenwasser, Esq., of

Burnside, Ebel & Gold. One of our clients would like

to settle an old complaint. [email protected]

I coaxed Gorman back into his townhouse on Horatio Street. His malady grew worse and worse. I hired cops from the local precinct to become his babysitters, and whenever he strolled too far in his pajamas, I picked up the old man and returned him to Horatio. His skull seemed transparent when he took off his Mickey Mantle hat.

“Rick, I'll never make it. I can't stop dreaming of Alice's eyes.”

I couldn't wait around for that lonely hearts column to kick in. I had to hire some desperate actress to play the grown-up Alice. I asked my junior associates to contact the most obscure talent agencies in Manhattan. Whoever auditioned was given the same spiel.

“Look,” I said, “he'll cry in your arms, you'll forgive him, and you walk away with a fat check.”

The auditions went on for days. Then my dream Alice walked into Burnside, Ebel & Gold like another desperate actress. But I could tell the difference. She had a kind of natural flamboyance that none of the actresses had. Her hair was swept back. Her eyes had a liquid darkness, as if pieces of black silver lay behind them. It frightened me, because she had my mother's high cheekbones and sweet arrogance.

“Sit down, please. You're not with a talent agency. You must have noticed my ad in that Bronx magazine.”

“No,” she said. “One of my cousins did—Orlando's oldest boy.”

“I don't understand. Aren't you Tiny Batista's daughter?”

“No,” she said. “I'm his niece.”

“And your name isn't Alice?”

“Alicia.”

I had to use whatever bit of cunning I had left. “But my client was very specific. Tiny Batista's daughter, he said.”

“Tiny never had a daughter.”

I offered her some coffee. We had to indulge our clients, and the firm had its own pastry chef. That was one of our signatures. I had vanilla brownies and croissants to offer Alicia. I had low-calorie shortcake. I had almond macaroons. But she would have none of our purchased plunder. She wouldn't even agree to an espresso.

“I'd rather not name my client, Alicia. But if you would agree to meet with him, I'd make it worth your while.”

She laughed bitterly with those dark pieces of silver.

“Meet the worst slumlord in the Bronx? Martin Gorman had my uncle killed. I was right there. The police fed me lollipops after they finished hammering on Uncle's brains. Oh, he lived a couple of years, Mr. Rosenwasser. But I had to wheel him around. Your client paid some of the hospital bills, with Uncle's own blood.”

She was beautiful with that flare of anger and bitterness, though she must have had scarlet fever as a child. I saw the pockmarks on her face.

“Your uncle did steal from him.”

She reached over and tugged at my hand-painted necktie. “Ricardo, whatever Uncle stole, he stole for the slumlord.”

“My client isn't a slumlord,” I had to insist.

“Then what would you call a man who steals his own sinks? Tiny helped him, I admit. But the slumlord paid him a ridiculous price. And that's why they quarreled.”

My voice got weaker and weaker. “How would you know all this? You were five.” Alicia put two fingers into her mouth. And she whistled in such a high pitch that I thought my eardrums would shatter.

“
Five
,” she said. “That was old enough to be their little accomplice. They dressed me in white, with a bridal veil. I was their lookout. They had to cart their toilet bowls and sinks away in a truck. I would stand at the corner and whirl around. If a patrol car came I would whistle . . . and flirt with the police.”

It bothered me to imagine her as a little girl in a bridal veil.

“Mr. Gorman had the police in his pocket,” I said.

“There were other pockets, some as huge as his own.”

This beautiful Bronx witch hadn't arrived out of nowhere. I'd summoned her up via the columns of
Back In the Bronx
.

“Alicia, couldn't we have a little wine in the Village before we meet the old man? I know a diner on Hudson and Bethune—nothing fancy. It's called the Bus Stop. And it isn't far from where the old man lives.”

“Shame on you,” she said. “I ought to slap your fingers. Trying to hit on me. But I have no intention of meeting that slumlord again. He poisoned my childhood.”

“Then why did you come here—to my office?”

“Oh,” she said, “I didn't want to be impolite. And I was curious about you—a Latino lawyer in a big Jewish law firm.”

“I'm half Jewish,” I had to insist.

“But it's the
other
half that interested your partners. A
Borinqueño
at Burnside, Ebel & Gold.”

And she walked out of my office. I didn't even know her last name. I canceled all my appointments and took a cab down to Horatio Street. Gorman wandered through his townhouse like a ghost in gray pajamas. I could barely catch up with him.

“Mr. G., slow down! I met her.”

He scrutinized my face with steel in his eyes. “Little Alice?”

“Her name is Alicia. And she isn't Tiny Batista's daughter. She's his niece.”

“That's impossible,” the old man said. And then his mind began to recalibrate.

“Why didn't you bring her here, Rick?”

We both sat down on his stairs. “Tiny Batista wasn't your hireling. He was your partner in crime. And you had a five-year-old girl on your payroll.”

“She wasn't on any payroll. We bought her outfits, dressed her up like a doll. She did a few favors for us. Why didn't you bring her here?”

“She's had enough of you for one lifetime. Was it so important to have Batista's skull bashed in?”

“He got greedy,” the old man said. “He was threatening me. I thought he would back down. And then Little Alice ate me up with her eyes.”

“
Alicia
,” I said. And he was bawling again. He didn't even have his Mantle cap to hide his skull. There was little left of him but his eye sockets. It was a face without any flesh.

2.

I
found Little Alice, even if she'd appeared in my office without a last name. My guys could track her once they knew she was Tiny's niece—Alicia Alvarez. She'd never married. She was a nurse at Montefiore Medical Center. And she must have moved away from the wild lands of Minford Place, because she lived near the hospital, at a nurses' residence on Rochambeau Avenue, in an enclave known as Norwood. It was a little golden triangle, protected from the ravages of the South Bronx by a river, a cemetery, and two parks. The Irishers had once lived there along with Jewish grocers. And I'd lived there with my maiden aunt, in a brick castle right on Rochambeau, after Mom and Dad died. I was like a scavenger in that golden triangle—I stole from stationery stores, from corner groceries, and took whatever I could find until I was put away at Spofford. I would have remained a thief if the old man hadn't waved his magic wand and gotten me into Bronx Science. So I couldn't abandon him to all the crazy wolves inside his crazy head.

But he wouldn't get dressed, not even for Alicia, and I couldn't let him walk around Rochambeau Avenue in his pajamas, like some escapee from an asylum. I had to bundle him into my overcoat. And we ventured up to Norwood in a chauffeured limousine. Auntie's brick castle was still there, with its Tudor façade, but other castles had been torn down—the medical center had gobbled up more and more space, and that golden triangle could have been Montefiore's own little garden, littered with parking lots.

We bribed a super and were able to get into Alicia's residence—it was a brick dormitory for unmarried nurses and all the other “nuns” of Montefiore. We buzzed upstairs, but Alicia wasn't home. The super lent us her key. She lived in a studio apartment that looked out onto one of the parking lots. Gorman stumbled around like a blind man, but I searched for clues. She didn't even have a bookcase—just a bare white bed, a worn sofa, a tiny kitchen with a few pots and pans, and a television set with a flat screen.

I couldn't find a hint of Alicia except for one bulletin board on a barren wall; within its wooden frame were snapshots of crippled children from Montefiore's wards—the children had wary eyes. Blue and green Post-it flags were pinned to the corkboard with little reminders of Alicia's schedule and hours. I had to decipher the scratch of her hand.

Tell Josephine R. to meet me at six . . .

Find Brad after his chemo . . .

Caught between the crippled children and that medley of Post-it flags was another snapshot, much older than the rest. It hung at a slant like some kind of relic in its own tiny silver frame. I wasn't stupid. I recognized Martin Gorman as a much younger man. He was standing with a giant—Tiny Batista—who had the ghostly presence of a child. There was nothing mean or malicious about the giant. He could have been a slow-witted angel. With them was the little girl who had been haunting the old man's dreams. She had chubby fingers in the photo. I could sense nothing in her face but delight—and the little signs of her scarlet fever. She was clutching Martin Gorman's ear . . .

We left the brick dormitory, and I was about to track Alicia to her station at the Children's Hospital, but I didn't have the chance. Alicia spotted us before we spotted her. She was walking on Rochambeau in a white hospital coat. Her eyebrows began to knit. It wasn't hard to read the fury on her face. She never even looked at the old man. She was staring at me with the same dark eyes that had once ripped into the old man's heart.

“I'll kill you if you ever come here again.”

3.

I
forgot that she had been a terrific tease when she was five, that she had flirted with strangers, wearing a child's wedding dress and a white veil, to protect the old man's toilets and sinks. When I returned to the office, I discovered an e-mail from her in my in-box.

Ricardo, meet me tomorrow (Wednesday) at the Bus Stop, 7 P.M. sharp. Bring the slumlord. I wouldn't want him to travel too far uptown in his pajamas. He might get lost.

We arrived early and sat in one of the booths. It was a week before Halloween, and I wondered if she'd ride in on a broomstick. But Alicia showed up in a child's veil. She seemed to bloom right inside her blouse.

“Alice,” the old man said, “it breaks my heart to look at you.”

We were all drinking merlot.

“There's no absolution,” she said, sipping from her glass.

She sat across from us. She hadn't come here to excite me and the old man, but I was excited and I shouldn't have been by some child-woman out of Martin Gorman's past. That wasn't in my playbook. But here she was, furious at the old man and me, and I was growing cockeyed as I gazed at the crook of her elbow.

“Uncle Martin,” she said in a soft voice, with all the shrewdness of a little girl in a white veil. “I don't give a damn how much penance you do in your pajamas. Uncle Tiny was your partner. You shouldn't have ruined him.”

“But I'll donate a million to Montefiore in
his
name. I'll endow every crippled child in the Bronx with a pair of crutches. I'll do anything you ask. Christ, I want to lie down and not have to stare at your wounded eyes in my dreams.”

“But I want you to stare at them—forever.”

The old man leaned over and sobbed into his salmon steak. I was the sweet-talker who could mesmerize whole juries but couldn't get back the old man's sweet dreams.