Blue Eyes (14 page)

He played so often now and with such concentration that he kept scraping the bat against the side of the table; pieces of rubber chipped off near the handle. Coen treated the bald spots on the edges of the sponge with red nail polish, which prevented further wounds, but he would have to peel the rubber off pretty soon and buy a new sandwich kit. He resented the delicacy of the bat, its profoundly short life, and he told Schiller so. “Then play with the pimples,” Schiller said, and Coen shut up. Looking over the span of tables he saw Vander Child coming toward him, in sneakers and duck pants, with a tote bag under his arm. “Buenos días,” Child said, aping Coen's bit of Mexico. Schiller disliked him from the start; only an unprincipled man would arrive for ping-pong in a pair of white pants. And he went to his cubbyhole behind the tables to bake an asparagus pie. Schiller's coolness sobered Child. “I'm sorry. You wouldn't drop over. And I wanted to thank you … so I thought we could hit a few. Okay? I didn't mean to occupy your territory. Should I go?”

“Let's hit,” Coen said, and Child unwrapped his Butterfly.

“I picked a boarding school for Caroline in Vermont. She won't run far. She'll have great stories to tell the girls. I doubt that any of them ever set up housekeeping in Mexico City. Manfred, I'm grateful to you. Without you Pimloe would still be smelling the ground.”

“I'm not so sure,” Coen said, delivering a lob serve that caught Child with his feet pointing away from the ball. He congratulated Coen.

“You've gotten sneakier since we played in my den.”

“It's not me,” Coen said. “It's the bat.” And he dropped a serve into the other corner. Child made a clumsy swipe, the Butterfly like a claw in his hand, and the ball slapped his knuckles. Coen didn't appreciate Child's bearishness. He knew the margin his serves ought to bring. They shouldn't have given Child that much trouble. The next time he put nothing on the ball. It drew knuckles again. He pushed two more serves past Child and lost all interest in him.

“I don't forget the man who does me a favor. I told Pimloe exactly how I feel. I said, ‘You're underplaying this Coen. He belongs higher up.' Manfred, you can't be that far from retirement. If the bastards manhandle you, you can always come to me.”

“Hit the ball, Mr. Child.”

Child wooed Coen between serves. “I wouldn't be stingy with a man of your scope. You could keep Caroline out of the potholes, away from the bog. Are you listening, Manfred?”

“You don't owe me, Mr. Child. You owe César Guzmann. He found your daughter, him and a taxi jumper named Chino Reyes. I was in the middle, that's all.”

“Tush,” Child said. “Carrie wouldn't have come home with those palookas. It had to be you.” Coen stopped counting points.

“She wasn't too anxious to come. The Chinaman persuaded her. What's going on between you and Guzmann, Mr. Child? I'm not crazy about monkeyshines. You swore to me you never heard of César.”

“Business ethics, Manfred. Nothing more. I don't like to mention a rival. Especially when he's such a pest. Besides, there's no harm done. Carrie's back, and you're in thick with Inspector Pimloe. He's your rabbi. Isn't that what they call it in the stationhouse? Somebody to snatch you up.”

“My rabbi's gone,” Coen said. “He's fishing in the Bronx.”

Unable to budge Coen, to align him properly and sweep him under his cuff, he picked right now to mention the badge and the gun. “Trussed up today, aren't you, Manfred?” Coen still refused to perform for Child.

“Force of habit,” he said. “I can't even piss with my holster off.”

Child couldn't reach such a dumb cop. He was ready to slap Coen with the Butterfly, bite him in ping-pong, jerk him from corner to corner, punish him for being intransigent, for not realizing he had missed his chance with Vander Child, but Coen put no energy into his returns, and Child couldn't play off a dead bat. So the ball moved between them in a dull floating line that wouldn't vary. Stubborn, they hid their resentment behind a series of prettier and prettier shots. They swayed on either hip, tossed their shoulders in a perfect arc, and huffed politely without affecting the line of the ball. Spanish Arnold thought two
maniacos
were at the table. He didn't like to interrupt Coen's ping-pong matches but his face was growing chalky from watching the ball, and the First Deputy's man wanted Coen. He twiddled a finger at Coen's eye. He mimicked the chauffeur's Neanderthal slouch. He spit into his hands. Coen wouldn't look at him. Arnold mumbled “Crazy.” The
maniaco
would go on slapping the ball unless Schiller took the table down. Arnold resorted to sneakiness. At Child's next return he jumped out to whisper to Coen. “Brodsky's waiting for you.”

The ball crossed the net twice before Coen said, “Shit.”

“Manfred, he's outside.”

Coen entrusted his bat to Arnold, made apologies to Child, and passed Schiller's cubbyhole on the way out. The chauffeur cursed at him and belittled his ping-pong clothes. “If you're going to live in a cave, couldn't you call in? Pimloe wants you. Come on.”

Coen expected Pimloe's downtown dungeon but Brodsky took him to a supermarket in Washington Heights. Pimloe tightened around the mouth when he saw Coen. He was standing with a shopping cart in an obscure aisle. “You'll get us all arrested,” he snarled to Coen. Then he turned on Brodsky. “Couldn't you bring him in something decent? Lend him your coat, for Christ's sake.” Coen smiled at the groceries in Pimloe's cart; jumbo-sized boxes of farina, different toothpastes, grapefruit sacks piled high to keep him out of sight. Serving with Isaac had crippled his Harvard upbringing, and he couldn't talk without Isaac's mannerisms and Isaac's slurs. “Coen, you've been on tit jobs too long. I'm taking you off the tit. Cooperate, or you'll be watching nigger eyes on Bushwick Avenue.”

“You'd be doing me a favor. They hate my guts at the Second Division. They think I'm your private rat.”

“Just mind my store, Coen, and you won't have to catch homicides with those gloms from the Second.”

“Herbert, who are you going to make me tickle?”

“Nobody. I want you to stay close to César and all the Guzmanns.”

“Brodsky,” Coen said. “Tell him he's a funny man.”

“Manfred, he knows you grew up with the tribe. He's not asking you to bury them, only sit with them a while.”

“I suppose César's going to kiss me and give me the lists of the whorehouse chain he intends to open. Maybe I can nail chickens and dicemen for you.”

“They're not into whorehouses,” Pimloe said. “They're into something else. Anyway, you don't owe them.”

“Herbert, why are you so sure?”

“They killed your mom and dad.”

The holes in the grapefruit sacks twitched green for Coen. He was calm otherwise. The farina labels remained perfectly clear.

Pimloe stayed behind the cart; even before his own ascendancy he had questioned Coen's worth to the department, this boy with the beautiful cheeks who could play a woman or a man with equal facility but had a cold, hard nature and a thick skull, and an utter disregard for concepts. So he turned away and let the chauffeur have Coen.

“Manfred, the Inspector's right. The supermarkets murdered the little stores. Your dad took bread from the Guzmanns to keep alive, and when you went into the service, when you wore the uniform, mind you, and saved Papa's Bronx from the Reds, Guzmann put the bite on your dad, made unreasonable demands, wanted his money back in one small bundle, and your dad lit the oven rather than face the thought of losing his store.”

Coen pushed the farina boxes out from in front of Pimloe's head. “Who told you?”

Pimloe tried to wheel the cart into another aisle but Coen stuck a foot in his path. “Who told you?”

The chauffeur answered, “Isaac.”

Pimloe clamped his teeth. “I swear. It was Isaac.” He was afraid for his life. Bare knees and a blue jersey might be contemptible on a bull in a supermarket, only Coen was the one with a gun.

“Manfred,” the chauffeur said. “We knew it for years. About your father and the Guzmanns.”

Coen's legs were chilled. The refrigerated air ate underneath his woolen socks and stormed on his ankles. He had to speak low. “Brodsky, take me to Schiller's.”

Brodsky looked to Pimloe.

“Take him,” Pimloe said. “Then come back for me.” With Coen in a stupor, Pimloe could afford some charity. He upended the farina boxes and refurbished his plans for Coen. “Remember, Coen, remember, pull on César's tail.” Secured behind the cart he could squall again. “Brodsky, reassure him. Tell him I'm not his enemy. Tell him we want the same things. Guzmann in the can.”

Brodsky got him into the car. Coen rubbed the chill off his ankles. He removed wriststraps and sweatband and stuffed them in his pocket. Brodsky wasn't sure where the recriminations would fall. He braced his shoulders and his neck.

“Manfred, I know it's shitty telling you now, but the Inspector needed the leverage. He doesn't have Isaac's charm. Manfred, it was my idea to hook you into this. Forget the whores. César's running a goddamn marriage bureau, a lonelyhearts club for middle-class Mexicos. He'll supply you with all the brides you want. The package comes guaranteed. If you don't like her, he changes brides. How he smuggles them in is nobody's business. Where he gets the raw material, that's what I'd like to know. He specializes in young stuff.”

“Port Authority,” Coen volunteered.

“What?”

But he wouldn't open his mouth until the chauffeur dropped him on Schiller's basement steps. “Pimloe blows his nose too hard. Isaac could have stopped any lonelyhearts club in a week. They nab stray girls outside the bus terminal. That's the central chicken coop. Now you tell me what's in Pimloe's head. Why does he want to hurt Jerónimo?”

The chauffeur shrugged. “Who's Jerónimo?”

Coen followed him up the street kicking fenders on the First Deputy's car.

“Manfred, stop, please … I can't tell you about Jerónimo.”

The fruit sellers along Columbus were fond of Coen. They waved to him while he kicked.

“Manfred, I never talked to Jerónimo in my life. Ask Pimloe yourself. Pimloe wouldn't lie.”

He walked into Schiller's. Arnold was still at Coen's table with Vander Child. They saw the pale markings on Coen's cheeks, the swollen blue under his eyes. “Manfred, what's wrong?” Alone with Arnold, Child learned to appreciate Coen's habitat. He didn't say one smug word about the knotted rag Arnold wore on his foot. (The Spic wouldn't suffer the indignity of being fitted for another orthopedic shoe; he was waiting long enough for Coen to win his old shoe from Chino Reyes.) And Child was startled by the devotion Coen could command from a gimp. “Manfred, what's wrong?”

“I'm tired, Arnold. I'll rest in Schiller's room.”

Child wrapped his Butterfly. “Manfred, I hoped we could settle all the mysteries … play a decent game … no phony spins, carnival shots … without this César fellow.”

“Later, Mr. Child. Maybe later.”

He bundled up his tote bag and walked out in white ducks. Schiller wouldn't say goodbye. Arnold found pillows for Coen.

With Coen wiped out, retiring to Schiller's tiny room in gym pants, Arnold went upstairs to the singles hotel. He had some trouble on Schiller's steps because he needed to clutch the banister with two hands and hop with his bad foot in the air; the rags on his foot unwound, and Arnold had to make another temporary shoe with old newsprint and string from Schiller's cellar. He hobbled this way to the second story of the hotel, dogs and babies in the shitmobbed hall admiring his paper boot. The SROs knew Arnold was a common snitch, a stoolie for Coen; he enjoyed a certain prestige nevertheless, on account of his handcuffs and the expired Detectives Endowment card (Coen's) he carried in his wallet.

Arnold was the hotel's unpaid sheriff. He policed the halls, keeping out the junkmen from other singles hotels, guaranteeing the safety of prostitutes inside and outside their rooms, returning stolen food stamps and welfare checks to gentlemen retirees who were vulnerable to the more ambitious young dudes at the hotel. The Spic had no power other than the visibility of his handcuffs. Any of the dudes could have broken his feet, the good one and the bad, but they were conscious of how Arnold acquired the handcuffs, and they didn't want to mess with Coen. They had heard of “the Isaac machine” at the First Deputy's office, men with eyes bluer than Coen's, who could pop your nose with a thumb and shoot notches in your ear with a Detective Special. Still, Arnold was hindered in his work by the loss of his shoe.

He visited the winos who congregated on the landings with their bottles of Swiss-Up. He cautioned them to remove empty bottles from the stairs.

“Amigos, you'll cripple the dogs with that glass. You can thank Jesus no kid has swallowed a jug handle yet.”

The oldest wino, Piss, an ex-vaudevillian who had crimps in his skull from all the headstands he had performed on stage, talked back to the Spic. “Spanish, we don't need advice from a man what can't hold on to his shoe.” He rallied the other winos, getting them to surround Arnold and push him into the wall. “Some tribute, Spanish. Pay us now, or you'll go down the flights head first.”

Arnold didn't shake against the wall; he'd outfoxed these winos before. He had to learn their qualities, or he couldn't have survived as sheriff.

“Piss, I'll come back dead and climb up your shoulder. Ill take blood out of your neck. I'll turn your eyeballs white.”

Piss released the winos from their obligations to him; he wouldn't accept tribute from a ghoul.

Arnold went into Betty, the pros who lived next door to him. She usually shopped for the Spic, claiming him as a husband on the government papers she signed; she couldn't qualify for food stamps unless she had the semblance of a family.