Blue Eyes (9 page)

Coen decided to play the fox. “I'm looking for Jerónimo.”

“Ha-ha. More jokes like that, Manfred, and you'll bleed between your legs.”

They had been inseparable as boys, protecting Jerónimo from rock throwers and the thieves of Southern Boulevard, undressing the Loch Sheldrake monster scarecrow across the road from Papa's summer farm, sniffing laundered brassieres on country clotheslines, shoveling snow outside Papa's candy store, stealing sour pickles for Jorge and Jerónimo, practicing certain blood rites (they pricked their arms with safety pins), following
prostitutas
in the street. When his mother and father went on an egg-buying trip, Coen slept with César and Jerónimo in Jerónimo's bunk César would kill for his father and his brothers, and once he would have killed for Coen. At fourteen they grew apart. Coen ran around Manhattan with bohemians and bagel babies from the High School of Music and Art. He neglected César. A convert to Manhattan, he felt superior to the Guzmanns of Boston Road. He brushed his teeth in Manhattan water. He ate his mother's egg sandwiches in parks and museums. Realizing his own snobbery at fifteen and a half, his discomfort around the bagel babies, his nervousness in museums, he couldn't get back to César. Inscrutable by now, assuming Jerónimo's silences, César had nothing for Coen but mute hellos and goodbyes. Papa could forgive the high school boy, serve him extra balls of ice cream, seat him next to Jerónimo; César couldn't.

“Manfred, I may jump in and out of closets, but I don't miss too many of my father's songs. How bad do you want the Child girl?”

“You talked to Papa?” Coen said.

“Tell me, how bad?”

“I'm in a hole unless I bring her in. I'm still attached to one of the commissioners. And they can drop me anywhere they please.”

“She's in Mexico City.”

“I thought Peru,” Coen said. “César, can I get in?”

“Not alone. You'll need somebody. But you may not like him. The girl's with some mean characters.”

“Did they buy her?”

“Never mind. Meet me in an hour. The steerer will give you my address for tonight.”

“César, why were your boyfriends over there babbling about Jerónimo?”

“Don't question me, Manfred.”

“Maybe I can help.”

“Sure. The biggest gloms in your department are trying to sink my brother, and I suppose you're ready to stop them. Manfred, go away.”

“Sink Jerónimo? For what? Walking in the street? Tickling his prick? That's crazy.”

“They want to make him into the lipstick freak. That's the word coming down. And I don't throw hard money around for stale information.”

“César, I saw the sketches the police artists made, sketches of the freak. It's nothing like Jerónimo.”

“Don't worry. If they get their fingers on him, they'll change the sketch.”

The steerer drove Coen uptown. In the old days, when Coen still lived on Boston Road and worked for Isaac, he once rescued Jerónimo from a stationhouse in the Bronx. Selma Paderowski, thirteen, and a drinker of chocolate sodas, squinted at Jerónimo's woolly gray hair and decided to be in love. Proving her affection she tossed rocks at him, tore pieces off his shirt, dared him to peek at her crack. Because her craziness was undisguised, the Guzmanns tolerated these overtures to Jerónimo. Thus encouraged, she caught him near a fire hydrant, alone, without César or Alejandro, coaxed his thumb inside her skirt, and screamed until a foot patrolman arrived. Coen was sitting on his fire escape. He clumped down the steps, hopped off the ladder, and took the patrolman aside. Sheltered by Isaac, a newcomer to the police, he fumbled with his detective badge. “Civil problem,” he said. “I can handle it.” The patrolman told him to flake off. “This is my collar, friend.” Papa, César, Topal, Alejandro, and Jorge were hunched around the johnny pump feeding water to Jerónimo and watching Coen. César wanted to leap on the patrolman's back. But Papa kept him behind the johnny pump. Still, he was terrified, more terrified than his sons. Coen remembered Papa's sag; a North American for almost a quarter of a century, he had the stance of a foreigner, a
peruano
in the Bronx. The patrolman left with Jerónimo. “Papa, I'll help,” Coen shouted. He assumed the patrolman belonged to one of Papa's rivals. He ran to the drugstore and telephoned Isaac. Isaac intercepted the patrolman, got him to alter a few words in his complaint book, and gave Jerónimo to Coen. Jerónimo went straight to the candy store, drank half a gallon of chocolate milk, ruining three paper cups, and Papa swore his gratitude to Coen and promised to memorialize Coen's Chief on his Jewish-Christian candlesticks.

Coen showed up too early at César's West Eighty-ninth Street address, and he loitered outside the building. A man came out of a panel truck across the street with a large metal box that said “Telephone Repairs,” went into the building, chatted with the night doorman, shook his hand, and proceeded toward the elevators. Coen didn't like the smug way the doorman watched himself in the mirror. Some money changed hands, he had to figure. The doorman was opening his wallet when Coen asked him for apartment 9-D.

“Who you looking for?”

Coen was reluctant to say Zorro. So he became secretive with the doorman. “Ring him. Tell him Coen's here.”

The doorman backed off. “Is the gentleman expecting you, sir? Go straight up.”

Coen went down to the cellar. He found the repairman sitting on his box near the telephone lines with a notebook in his lap; he was wearing headphones and jumping onto somebody's wire with a pair of alligator clips. What annoyed Coen most was the pleasure the man took in his work, chuckling silently over everything he picked up with the headset. Coen pulled the box out from under him and dragged him around the room by his shirt.

“Fast,” Coen said. “Who's paying you?”

“Let's talk,” the man said. “I'll play, but let's talk.”

Coen relaxed his grip and stuck the man in the belly with the butt of his off-duty .38. The man cooed at the sight of Coen's gun.

“That's a Police Special, isn't it? Christ, you scared me. I thought you were some kind of gorilla. Listen, give me your badge number, and I'll fix you up. My people are in with the brass.”

“Prick, you're going down. You'll have bedsores on your ass for the next ten years. Tapping wires is no joke.”

The man slobbered into his notebook. “Wait. I'm a private operator, Jameson. Take my card. It was nothing, I swear. I was going to get right off.”

“Who's paying you?”

“Child.”

Coen tramped on the headphones and kicked Jameson out of the cellar.

César was waiting for Coen in pajamas with ventilated sleeves; the pajamas improved his disposition. He smiled, hugged Coen at the door, had a pitcher of sangria prepared with fruit at the bottom. He stirred the fruit and tested the sweetness with his finger. He sucked his finger in the style of the Guzmanns, sticking a knuckle in his mouth. Satisfied, he poured for Coen, who couldn't shake off the gloom after his encounter in the cellar.

“César, why bother with all the apartments? I caught Child's man downstairs sitting on your wire. What's between you and Child?”

“He makes home movies, and he accuses me of trying to muscle in.”

“Are you, César? Are you crowding him? Are you moving in on Child?”

“Never happen. Vander deals in shit.”

“Is his niece the star?”

“Who? High tits? Odette? Odette Leonhardy?”

“Isn't she Odile?”

“Odette, Odile. The girl's crawling. She's diseased. She takes them ten at a time.”

“César, did she ever work for you?”

César dropped his nose in the sangría and sniffed. “Manfred, my line is dice. You met the steerer. I provide the furniture, that's it. My customers make their own accommodations with the broads. Maybe she can advise you how often she gets down with crap players. Am I responsible for Odette?”

“Who put Carrie Child in Mexico?”

“Search me?”

“Try a little harder, César. If you can locate her so fast, you must know who took her out of Manhattan.”

“Ask Isaac,” César said, his nose moist from the pitcher. “Ask the brain.”

Coen was about to have a fit. “I suppose Isaac's into white slavery. I suppose he carries a whip for your father. Nothing would surprise me.”

They both crunched ice and nibbled on the rinds. They nibbled while the doorbell rang. Coen coughed up ice when he saw a switch of red hair against César's door. César laughed at the spectacle of Coen and the Chinaman stalking one another with holsters sticking out of their coats. “Put your pieces away,” César said, disgusted by the obscene tilt of the holsters. None of the Guzmanns owned a handgun. Papa didn't trust the validity of mechanical things. He was afraid his sons might shoot their peckers off. This is why Papa and the Marrano pickpockets couldn't succeed in Peru. Every other smalltime crook and policeman wore his
pistola.

“César,” Coen said. “Is this the shark you got for me? Forget it. I'll make Mexico on my own.”

“Manfred, you're asleep. They'll swallow you alive in Mexico City. Chino can get you in. Chino knows the hombres and all the streets.”

The Chinaman took off his wig. “I'll fix you, Coen, you blue-eyed fuck. I gave César my promise. So I'll help you first” He turned on his hip to pluck Coen's right ear (he'd left the humpbacked boot downtown). They began to wrestle in their coats. He threw Coen into César's bookcase. “You think this is the stationhouse, eh cop? You like to touch my face with the bulls standing around. We come back, man, I'll finish with you.”

César pulled books off Coen. The Chinaman squatted down and pretended to wipe himself. “Here Coen, take my fingerprints now.”

Coen came up growling, and César had to make the peace. They settled on the date, the proper hotel, and the means of recouping Caroline Child. César didn't offer the Chinaman a drink out of the pitcher. Coen found the Chinaman a glass. Chino wouldn't drink without a nod from César. And Coen felt like a reptile. He couldn't decide whether César was following the turns in his father's Marrano etiquette. Maybe the Guzmanns weren't supposed to drink with the pistols they hired. But the Chinaman got the nod, and he said “Salud” before he licked the sangría. Coen smiled. His head was stuffed with sweetened alcohol.

“Vander will pay for the whole trip,” he said.

César's cheeks flared little puffs of annoyance. “Manfred, you pay for yourself. I'll take care of Chino and the girl.” Then his cheeks grew shallower, and he nibbled rinds again. “That's my present to Vander.” He gave Coen one final hug. “Manfred, I'm no goody boy. You ask me for the girl, you'll get the girl. I want something in return. A favor.”

Coen didn't break the hug.

“Jerónimo's in Mexico.” César felt Coen's shoulders slacken with surprise. “He's staying with our cousin Mordeckay. He'll be glad to see you. I don't want my brother with strangers all the time. Go to him, Manfred. Sit with him in the park. Chino will show you where. If he's too thin, if my cousin takes advantage, if they don't give him enough, you talk to me. Only don't repeat what I said. Nobody should find out about Jerónimo. Not Isaac, nobody.”

“César, I never see Isaac. But why are you so afraid? Isaac works for your father.”

César stared at him. “He's the one who put the pins in Jerónimo.”

“César are you telling me Isaac's a rat? They threw him off the force. Why would he help them? He wouldn't bury Jerónimo.”

“I don't care. He's the one.”

Coen went out the door with a buzz in his head.

The Chinaman had to interrupt his siege of The Dwarf to satisfy Zorro and come to terms with Blue-eyes Coen. He would take the cop to Mexico, but he wouldn't wear his high shoe above Fourteenth Street. He no longer thought of it as Arnold's boot. He hadn't changed the laces or smoothed the wrinkles out. He didn't want a fancyman's shoe. No cop in the world could make him give it back. Not even the great Isaac, who was washing nickels in Papa Guzmann's sink. The Chinaman could have rushed. The Dwarf with his pistol, a Colt Commander .45, which he would bury in a lot on Prince Street before his Mexican trip. He could have left some smoke on the lapels of the bouncer girls, Janice and Sweeney. But he would have frightened Odile. So he approached the door with his gun hand free, the Colt 45 tucked inside the quick-draw holster sitting over his heart. The Chinaman had only two hours to spare; then he would have to ditch the gun and find Coen at the airport.

Odile watched him from the curtains. She hadn't left The Dwarf in thirty-six hours. Even when the Chinaman disappeared from time to time, she suspected he was pissing in a hallway down the block or buying cans of beer. Janice woke Sweeney, who had been snoring comfortably on a cot behind the bar. “The Chinee's coming,” Janice said. “He's crossing over.” The cousins had a gleam on their chins that didn't suit Odile. She could sense the battle lines. The Chinaman would never be able to dodge Janice and Sweeney wearing that wicked shoe. He was foolish to rile the cousins. “Chino Reyes,” she screamed, “I'm not getting down with any of your customers if you don't step back.”

They snatched him up by his arms, lifted him over the doorsill (he was only a bantamweight, one hundred and seventeen pounds), and hurled him against the bar. Janice cupped her fist into the finger grooves of the brass knucks. The Dwarf was empty at six in the morning, and she could have the Chinaman at her own leisure, play cat and mouse with him first. Sweeney tore the holster off his chest, threw the gun into an ice pail. She held the Chinaman down while Janice nipped his ear until the blood came. Sweeney cautioned Odile. “Baby, close your eyes. It's better if you don't watch.”