Marilyn the Wild (19 page)

“Alfred, are you making a living?”

Abdullah answered yes.

“Good. Because I aint putting out for paupers.”

Devoted to her, Abdullah didn't reveal his embarrassment. Leo drew his ear away from the bed. “Mama's getting delirious,” he whispered into Marilyn's shoulder.

“Isaac, are you fucking lately?”

“Mama, who has the time.”

Leo twisted Isaac's sleeve. “Don't answer her … Isaac, her brain is swelling up. Do you know what it means to be without a husband thirty years?”

Sophie dropped into the pillows. Her mouth twitched once. Her eyes registered a certain confusion. She tasted the salt on her lip. She belched. She tumbled into a profound sleep, holding Abdullah's hand. Leo crept out of the room.

Trapped between Abdullah and Marilyn, Isaac grew shy. He couldn't belittle Sophie's quest for boyfriends, in and out of her comas. No sugar leak could kill his mother's sexuality. Her skin was turning deep again. Isaac was left with his daughter. He heard bitter screams from the hall.

Leo was wrestling with his ex-wife. The elusive Selma lay under his knees, breathing sporadically, with Davey and Michael climbing up their father's back. “Let me finish her once and for all,” Leo choked out, his voice edged with a violence Isaac had never encountered in his brother. Leo wouldn't acknowledge Michael's clawing fingernails. Davey was sitting on his neck. Leo had his knuckles in Selma's windpipe. “Do I have to suffer on account of you?” Isaac had to pluck Davey and Michael by the seat of their Edwardian pants before he could get to Leo.

“Go back to your jail. Leo, the guards will miss their pinochle without you.”

Leo stumbled towards the exit, nurses, patients, and visitors popping out of doors to stare at him with loathing in their eyes. Davey and Michael blinked scowls at their father. Selma began to writhe on the floor. Spit collected under her nose. “He ruined my insides … oh, my God … oh, oh.” Selma grimaced and squeezed her ribs. “Help me, nurse, nurse.” The boys leaned over their mother, battle-weary, but terrified of the snaking motions of her body. Isaac understood Selma's scam. Her sputum was clear; he couldn't find a fleck of blood. Her cries had too much rhythm. He bent down, curling over Selma, so the boys couldn't hear him. “On your feet, sister-in-law. This place doesn't carry collision insurance. If you're thinking of hospitalizing yourself, here's my opinion. Some of the wards have handcuffs hanging from the beds. Sister, I'll lock you in. This is Bellevue, remember? People have been known to wander for years in the crazy ward.”

“Fuckface,” Selma mouthed into Isaac's chest as she fixed her stockings. The boys witnessed Selma's miraculous rise. They hugged her, pushing Isaac off with mean little blows.

Marilyn smiled from her grandmother's doorway. Isaac was plagued by a swarm of relatives, like any Jewish patriarch. He supplied the family glue. The Sidels would have crumbled long ago without the ministrations of Isaac. He soothed, he slapped, he mended broken wires, Marilyn's incredible daddy.

The crime reporters wanted their conference in the Police Commissioner's rooms, where they could peek at the furnishings of an old commissioner, Teddy Roosevelt; draperies, a gigantic desk, portraits of Teddy on the wall. Isaac wouldn't allow it. He herded the reporters into his own office, which had no marble fireplace, no chandeliers, no maroon on the windows, no desk with historic chinks and scars and a spacious hole carpentered for the knees of a future president of the United States, and could only remind such men and women of their ancient, cluttered “news shack” on Baxter Street. Isaac wouldn't provide sandwiches, or a police captain in a handsome tunic to coddle the reporters; Brodsky became his press secretary. The chauffeur clucked behind Isaac with envelopes belonging to the lollipop case.

The Chief talked of Rupert and Stanley's Chinatown escapade in primitive style, without embellishments, winks, and anecdotes, or the mannerisms of Barney Rosenblatt (Cowboy loved to rattle his cufflinks at reporters). Brodsky didn't hear the scratch of a single fountain pen. Cradling their notebooks, the reporters stood with slanted heads. The
Times
man was the first to jump on Isaac. Could the Chief en lighten him? What did the First Deputy's office make of isolated rat packs such as the lollipops preying on old men and women without real cause, devoting themselves to senseless destruction?

“It's a worldwide phenomenon,” Isaac said, cuddling his chin. “The same thing is true in Paris. The French police can pull any master criminal out of a chart, but it's teenage bandits—lollipops—who are talcing over the Champs Elysées. Babies robbing banks. Without a name or a face. Some Billy the Kid with a cheap kerchief on his nose.”

“Or Robin Hood,” said Tony Brill, the fat man with credentials from
The Toad;
neither Brodsky nor Isaac had ever noticed him at Headquarters.

Isaac frowned at this
Toad
man, ignoring Robin Hood. “Eight-year-old muggers and rapists in New York,” he said. “Killers at nine and ten. Are we supposed to keep infants in our confidential files?”

The stringer from
Newsweek
had a passion for intelligence tests. He led Isaac away from abstract causes, and asked him to fish through the envelopes in Brodsky's hand. “Chief, you must have a sorry bunch of detectives doing research for you. Where's your fact sheet on Rupert Weil?”

Brodsky grew miserable fumbling inside the sleeves of different envelopes. The stringer was already smug. “What's the kid's I.Q.?”

“Two hundred and seven,” Isaac said, making Brodsky close all the sleeves.

The
Daily News
man began to titter. “The kid must be a genius. I hear Mozart only came in at a hundred and ninety-nine.”

“Two hundred and seven,” Isaac said.

The stringer was obstinate. “What about Esther?”

“She went to parochial school,” Isaac said. “Her teachers are Spagnuolos, suspicious people. They refused to supply us with any records. But I don't have much faith in intelligence quotients. They tell you very little. Rupert was a chess player once. He could have been a grandmaster, who knows? He gave it up at twelve. Was it ‘intelligence' that told him where to place a knight? Look at Bobby Fischer. He has an I.Q. of a hundred and eight or nine. So give me a theory about geniuses? I'm not begrudging Rupert's terrific score. But
his
genius comes from willfulness, from a maddening obstinancy, not a talent for checking the right box. Take my word. Your geniuses come narrow these days. They have the power to stare at an object, a piece of fruit, a man's heart, and block out everything else in this stinking world.”

The reporters hadn't anticipated philosophical notions from a police inspector. The two nice ladies from the Brooklyn
Squire
, who were partial to Cowboy Rosenblatt, considered it an odd turn of events that Stanley Chin and Sophie Sidel should land in the same hospital. Was Isaac slinging mud in Cowboy's eye? Had the caper at St. Bartholomew's been staged for the benefit of newspapers and magazines? Was Rupert Weil working for the First Deputy's office? Did he steal the Chin boy at Isaac's request?

“Pure coincidence,” Isaac muttered. “Stanley has nothing to do with my mother now. And it's a crazy idea to think that Rupert works for me.”

“Not so crazy,” said Tony Brill.

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing.…” Tony Brill had to retreat from Isaac's terrible glare.
The Toad
couldn't insure him against potholes and loose bannisters at Police Headquarters. “Chief Sidel, weren't you friends with Rupert's dad? Maybe the kid was trying to find a subtle way to cooperate with you.”

“Bullshit,” Brodsky said. The members of Isaac's rubber-gun squad peeked into the room. Because they didn't have pistols at their hips, the reporters mistook them for civilians, and figured they could be rude to ordinary clerks. The rubber-gun boys were waving frantically at Isaac, without a bit of color in their cheeks. Brodsky mingled with them. His pants began to slide under his belly. He had to grab his pockets to save himself. “Conference dismissed,” he croaked with a tight mouth.

The reporters piled out of Isaac's office, dissatisfied with the surreptitious moves of First Deputy men. Isaac remained with Brodsky and the rubber-gun boys. “What's wrong?”

“Isaac, a package came to you … from Rupert Weil. We called the bomb squad. They're bringing over a special dog to sniff it out It could be a booby trap.”

“Dummies,” Isaac said. “I don't need a lousy dog.”

It was wrapped in butcher paper, with heavy string on the outside, the kind of string a bialy maker might use to secure a bag of rolls. It was a tremendous package, over two feet high. Isaac couldn't bite through the string; the fibers were too coarse. Brodsky ran for a pair of scissors. Isaac snapped at the knots. He tore under the butcher paper. The rubber-gun boys could see the rounded edges of a hatbox, a hatbox with a name on it: Philip Weil. Isaac opened the box. Brodsky put his hands over his ears. Isaac's other men slinked to one side. They saw a hand rustling in crumpled newspaper.

“Isaac, what the fuck is it?”

He held a chesspiece, a black bishop made of wood, with the points of a miter sitting on top, an inexpensive piece out of Rupert's own collection. The rubber-gun boys were bewildered. The package confirmed Rupert's craziness for them. Isaac wouldn't offer his opinion. He chased out all his men. “Brodsky, close the door.”

Isaac fingered the chesspiece, all the undulations in the wood (Rupert's bishop had a swollen belly), the weak black paint that was beginning to bald, the strip of velvet at the bottom, the rough spots along the miter. Rupert's telling me something, Isaac muttered in his head. The present of a bishop couldn't have been a caprice. Was the boy challenging Isaac to a game of postal chess? Should Isaac counter with a bishop of the opposite color? No. Rupert wasn't into that. This chess piece had to go back to his father's game. Philip was a master with a pair of cooperating bishops. He always drew black against Isaac, giving him a clean advantage. Isaac had the opening move. Philip wouldn't sit on his pieces. He eschewed the normal lines of defense. Philip had to slap at you. He didn't gobble up your pawns, or badger your king into slow strangulation. While you attacked with an armada of knights and rooks, your pieces sailing on some grandiose mission, Philip crept around them and used his bishops to tear out the throat of your queen.

“He's after one of my ladies,” Isaac spit into the hatbox. How many queens could a cop possess? Three or four? Rupert's going to slap me like his father did. Isaac couldn't believe the boy would touch Sophie again. But the Chief had a cautious heart. He'd put another “angel” outside Sophie's door in case he slipped over Rupert's logic. Was it Isaac's wife, the baroness Kathleen? Rupert would have to dig her out of the Florida swamps, Kathleen's new dominion. Ida Stutz? What could Rupert want with Isaac's fiancée? “Marilyn,” Isaac said with a definitive nasalness. It had to be.

The dog arrived from Twentieth Street, where the bomb squad had its own kennels on the roof of the Police Academy. Isaac was expecting a German shepherd with brilliant ears and a very long nose. This one was a mouse, a snip of a dog, a cocker spaniel with stunted legs and a body that hugged the ground. Isaac could pity such a creature. He wouldn't send it home to Twentieth Street without a sniff inside the hatbox.

The prisoners' ward at Bellevue had a ping-pong table, old-fashioned sandpaper rackets, and a bag of dusty balls, perfect for Manfred Coen. He could pass the time slapping balls into the table. There were only three patients in the ward today: a black Muslim with a wound in his thigh, a deranged Puerto Rican car thief who tried to hang himself in a police station, and Stanley Chin. None of them was in proper condition to play Coen. But the little pecking noises coming off the sandpaper were beginning to make them twitch. Stanley had to shout from his bed to halt Coen's slaps. “Blue Eyes, you wanna play?”