Marilyn the Wild (14 page)

“Isaac, you shouldn't worry. Stanley Chin won't die of hospital food. My men have been feeding him chocolate bars.”

Cowboy deserved to gloat; he'd secured Anita for life (the haberdasher would have had to orphan his skull if he disappeared from Schermerhom Street), he'd grabbed a lollipop away from Isaac in Corona, and he'd already whispered to the PC how Blue Eyes had been caught with cunty Marilyn. But Isaac stepped around him, muttering awkward hellos to the PC and his wife, and steered south along the wedding table until he reached the First Dep. Isaac hadn't come to discuss police business with his boss. He didn't tell O'Roarke about the nest of car thieves his “angels” had uncovered in the Third Division, cops supplying North Jersey gamblers with Fords and Buicks. Isaac had the details in his head; he would only burden O'Roarke after he was ready to pounce on the cops and rip their nest apart. Isaac leaned into the side of the table. “Can I get you and Mrs. O'Roarke something from the buffet, Commissioner Ned?”

The First Dep watched Isaac with crisp green eyes that could withstand the corrosion of drugs, and the radium he had to swallow; before the tumor in his throat began to eat away areas of his concentration, O'Roarke had been the most feared cop in New York. The Police Commissioner was strictly the Mayor's bride; enmeshed in city politics, a PC would vanish within a few seasons. The First Dep had remained in office thirty years. He broke in each new Commissioner, and had to sweep up the junk of the old PC. O'Roarke was the nearest thing to permanence a cop would ever know. And now the Deputy Commissioner was dying in his chair.

Gentle with Isaac, the First Dep asked for Coen. “Why is Manfred so far away? Is he catching fly balls? I can't see him from this end of the table.”

“It's nothing, Commissioner Ned. Cowboy doesn't want him near the bride.”

“That's fine for Cowboy. What about us? I always cheat on my indigestion when Manfred smiles.”

“I can bring him, but he'll get into trouble down here. He's much better off in Cowboy's woods.”

Isaac sent for Blue Eyes. Coen passed the tables reserved for detective sergeants, minor relatives, and lowly precinct captains who sneered at the angel boy behind their napkins because they couldn't afford to alienate Isaac in the open. Isaac disappeared. He'd suffered through the smorgasbord, showing his eyeteeth to commissioners, deputy mayors, and choice Rosenblatts, and he crept out of the hall on ripple soles to avoid a sit-down dinner, where he would have had to swallow turkey breasts, string beans, Neptune cabbage, and shreds of fruit cocktail with Barney's “crows” and a hierarchy of fat cops. Blue Eyes could double for him. Isaac tapped Coen's chin on his way out. “Watch the First Dep. If he spits blood, or anything, you call me.”

Coen had to shift for himself. He couldn't abscond, like his Chief. He was resigned to a dead Sunday. The First Dep found a chair for him. Blue Eyes was squeezed into the wedding table. Cowboy gobbled grapefruit sections with dark spit on his tongue. He couldn't overrule Commissioner Ned. Coen would have to stay. The smorgasbord was wheeled out, pushing towards the kitchen like an exhausted mountain, delicacies tottering in their trays. A three-piece band appeared during the first course, a saxophone, an accordion, and a bass fiddle. The band set itself up in what had earlier been the inner ring of the smorgasbord. Wedding guests were encouraged to dance between courses, so the kitchen crew would have the chance to clear every table; the assistant chefs had to decorate five hundred platters with minced potato balls for the second course.

The hard scream of the saxophone cluttered the hall with a whiff of metal. The fiddler had thickened fingers. The accordionist could barely tease a cop out onto the floor. With pistols stuck in their belts, most cops were reluctant to dance. Their wives didn't brood over this; they wanted to dance with Coen. Blue Eyes had to leave the table. The “crows” were giving him murderous looks. One by one the wives embraced him. The accordionist had prepared a spicy Hebrew song for the Hands of Esau and Irish jigs for the Holy Rood of Catholic cops. The wives interrupted his melodies. They demanded something slow. Coen went from fox-trot to fox-trot He couldn't tire the wives. They forced him to change partners in the middle of a dip. The constant scrub of skin gave Coen an unfortunate erection. The wives seized upon such vulnerabilities to dance up close to Blue Eyes. The husbands grew exceedingly grim. They were taking mental target practice at the Neptune Manor, popping Coen's pretty ears and pretty mouth. Blue Eyes was intolerable to them. These men trudged through their tours of duty worrying about the spies the First Deputy had planted in their stationhouses; they didn't have to see Isaac's angel bumping with their wives.

The haberdasher's bride must have sensed Coen's desperation. She got up, holding pieces of gown with a fist, to cut in on the wives and lure them away from Coen. But she hadn't reckoned on the delicacy of Coen's lines, the touch of a fingernail in her palm, the feel of an embarrassed prick. Her face began to erupt, blotches glowing under her veil. She sucked her own spit to distract herself. The haberdasher was mortified. His Anita danced two feet from him with her wrists unfurled. The creases in her back were unmistakable. Anita was bending to Coen. The haberdasher sought his father-in-law with narrowed cheeks. Cowboy didn't idle at the wedding table; he'd been plotting Coen's downfall from the beginning of the fox-trot. Barney knew a grocer in Bath Beach, a kind Italian boy, who might be willing to shut Coen's eyes for a hundred dollars. The grocer came with a guarantee; he wouldn't accept a penny if he should happen to fail.

But the wedding hall was brushed by a miracle; Coen's prick went down. Anita bent away from him. She kept a few inches between Blue Eyes and herself. Her fierce complexion dwindled under the veil. Soon she could have her native coloring again. Coen escorted her to the table, the commissioners clapping feebly for the bride. The haberdasher was having evil thoughts about his wedding night. Blue Eyes sat with his nose in the silverware, determined not to peek at Anita's veil. Barney could politick with wedding guests now that sweetheart Coen had his dancing shoes under the table. The waiters were coming; little feathers of steam rose off the turkey breasts, which had their own potato balls and a gulley of peas.

Isaac enjoyed Sunday afternoons at Centre Street when the commissioner's rooms weren't swollen with detectives and boyish cops who served as runners and secretaries. He could poke through half-deserted halls without confronting dignitaries, or FBI men, and visiting inspectors from the London murder squad and the French Sûreté; just Sunday cops, like Isaac himself, who were married to their notebooks and their shields, and who loved the smell of dark woodwork, and the comforts of a sinking building: Headquarters was falling into the ground at the rate of two inches every five years. Stanchions had been put around the building to shore it up, and the city engineers claimed they could retard the sinkage by almost an inch.

Isaac ducked under the stanchions, which clung to Headquarters like an enormous iron skirt, passed through a tight front door (Headquarters had to screen its enemies and its friends), and paused at the security booth; the guard, who worked in Brooklyn the rest of the week, sat behind a bulletproof cage. This Sunday man had a shrewdness for picking girls off the street He would babble to them as they stood outside the cage, their tits against the green bulletproof glass. Phinney, the Sunday man, was too discreet to invite them into the booth. There was a girl with him now. Issac could only see one side of her face. Her legs were bare under her pea coat The stretch of her calves appealed to Isaac, but he couldn't understand how any girl could go without socks in the middle of February. He saluted the guard. Phinney said, “Good afternoon, Chief,” with a cowlike smile. Isaac could afford to be lax with him. The Irish Mafia would rash to communion after Barney's wedding: Headquarters was free of commissioners.

Isaac went upstairs. The duty sergeant who belonged to Commissioner O'Roarke was sleeping on a bench. Isaac wouldn't disturb him. He closed his office door with a soft pull of the knob. He was going to play back several tapes a stoolie of his had prepared of cops shaking down a supermarket. He sat behind his desk searching for spools. He stabbed his fingers in a drawer, but Isaac wouldn't howl out his pain. He could swear his desk had begun to shiver. A loud crump, like the pop of paper bags in his skull, catapulted Isaac off his chair. The window was shitting glass. Isaac had his cheek in the wall. Shock waves came up through the floor, thick patterns of congested air that shoved smoke into Isaac's mouth. He crawled out of the room, spitting up phlegm and crumbled plaster. Splits had developed in the ceiling. The walls had turned to bark.

The duty sergeant was under his bench. His head emerged to glower at Isaac, whose scalp was mostly white (the Chief hadn't shaken off the plaster). “Mercy, Isaac, it's happened. The building's caved in. Will they get to us, Chief? Will they be able to tunnel us out?”

The sergeant's delirium made Isaac smile. “Relax, Malone. It will be an easy rescue. We couldn't have sunk more than a thousand feet.” The sergeant drew his head all the way in. Isaac felt ashamed. “Malone? I'm sorry … it was a small bomb. It must have gone off in the bathroom under my office.”

Malone didn't move his head. “Isaac, could it be those crazy Puerto Ricans, or the Black Liberation boys? Were they trying to bury a few cops alive?”

“No, no, that kiss was meant for me.”

Isaac ran down to the next floor. He walked into the bathroom with a handkerchief over his face. A pea coat had been dropped under the sink. Isaac called himself a dummy and a toad; he should have stared harder at that girl without her stockings. Phinney couldn't have brought her into Headquarters. The girl was using him. He had a better view of her face. It was bitten with glass and burnt powder. He couldn't find her underwear. She'd come to Isaac in a pea coat, moccasins, and skin. Three cracked mayonnaise jars were near the body. It took Isaac time to sniff the jars before he noticed that one of the girl's arms had been ripped off in the blast.

Two men charged into the bathroom wearing helmets, hard aprons, asbestos jump suits, and gigantic terry cloth gloves. They were members of the bomb squad stationed at the Police Academy. Isaac stepped in front of them. “You can go home,” he said. “The case is closed. You'll hear about it in my report.”

Both helmets muttered “Fuck you” at Isaac. This was their turf. No one could tell them they were intruders at a bombing. They had to sift through the debris.

Isaac mentioned his name and then shouted into the asbestos hats. “I have the First Dep's warranty. If you touch a piece of glass, if you disturb anything, I'll have your tongues burned.”

The men shrugged behind their aprons. They couldn't wrestle Isaac the Pure with terry cloth gloves. They peeked at the dead girl's crotch and walked out, uninterested in a dismembered arm. Phinney, the Sunday man, was crouching by the stairs, his face gone sallow. He called into the bathroom, frightened to step inside. “Isaac, who is that stupid girl?”

“A lollipop, Esther Rose.”

“She said she had to go pee … I didn't … Isaac, how should I know she was smuggling hot ones under her coat?”

“Phinney, you fucked yourself. Headquarters isn't a public piss pot. Nobody's supposed to get up those stairs. They'll wire you to the ceiling and bleed your pension out of your ears.”

Phinney chewed on a knuckle. “What should I tell them, Isaac? Gimme a story, please.”

“It takes a clever man to lie, Phinney. You tell the truth. Now shut up and get back to your post. Cowboy's only a river away. There'll be a hundred cops on our heads any minute.”

10.

M
ARILYN
had difficulties sustaining her new bachelorhood. There was more than one woman in her father's house. Isaac had brought his “fiancée” to Rivington Street. He couldn't have Ida Stutz prowling in her own flat when Rupert Weil could attack a fire escape. So the three of them had to blow air in two small rooms. The girls couldn't get along. Marilyn tried. But Ida was fidgety around an educated girl. She grew ashamed of her sweat, and the bits of cheese that always fell into her hair while she was making blintzes at the restaurant. Her body seemed like a miserable article next to Marilyn's fine elbows and goyisher ribs. Ida sniffled into the cheese; she wanted to throw her head in a tub of barley soup and drown.