Marilyn the Wild (20 page)

Coen laughed. “You'll hurt your fingers, Stanley. You can't grip a bat.”

“I don't need no bat.” He waved a mitten in the air. “I play with this.”

“With your cast?” Coen said. “The doctors would skin me alive.”

“How they gonna know? Blue Eyes, don't be afraid.”

Coen found a wheelchair. He pushed Stanley from the bed to the ping-pong table, setting him up so his chin would be near the table's center mark. Coen picked up the racket. He wouldn't angle it. He didn't want to confuse the boy with side spin off the sandpaper. He stroked the ball over the net. Stanley punched it back with his left mitten. Coen lunged with his knees wide apart. He missed the ball. He frowned at the sandpaper and took another ball out of the bag. He blew on it, testing the seams by mashing it into the table with his palm. He listened for the dull pock that would have told him there was a crack in the ball. The pock didn't come. He served again. Stanley punched the ball with his other mitten. Coen knocked his knees together. The cop was astonished. His racket kissed nothing but air. Stanley had developed top spin with the plaster on his knuckles.

“That's kung-fu, man.”

Stanley put a mitten in his mouth. He couldn't stop giggling. He hadn't meant to tease Coen, but the cop's disgust with the racket in his hand could make a boy piss with his eyes. “It's called the iron fist. It takes concentration, man. You aim for one spot. Sometimes it screws up, Mr. Coen. But when you hit the ball, it stays hit.”

An orderly motioned Blue Eyes over to the telephone. Manfred was still confused. How could a boy in a wheelchair with mittens on destroy his game? Coen wished he'd brought his sponge bat, his Mark V, to the prisoners' ward. Then he'd discover what an iron fist could do against a few millimeters of sponge. Brodsky was screaming at him.

“Coen, you deaf, or what?”

Manfred wiggled the receiver. “Brodsky, I can understand every word.”

“Then move your ass over to Headquarters.”

“What about Stanley Chin?”

“Forget the little Chinaman. Coen, bring your piece. If you drop a bullet on the floor the First Dep will murder you. It's Rupert Weil. I think Isaac wants you to blow him away.”

Part Four

14.

M
ARILYN
could hear the wind in the struts of her daddy's fire escape. The radio promised a blizzard. She shuddered at the prospect of blinding snow. Marilyn was a Riverdale girl. Snowstorms could make her crazy. She remembered the blizzards out of her childhood, when Riverdale was blocked off from the rest of the world, and she couldn't go to school. She had to live on peas and sesame sticks in her mother's cupboard. She would see puff balls on the Hudson, the wind rolling loose masses of snow. Her mother was in Baltimore, or Miami, and her father was caught downtown. Isaac couldn't telephone. The snow had strangled the wires. Crackles came out of the telephone box, a disgusting electric snore. And Marilyn would suck on her braids, exhausted, the peas growling in her belly, too frightened to cry.

She couldn't even laugh at her ancient hysteria, anxieties that were fifteen years old. She was in her daddy's house. After three husbands, she hadn't outgrown her fear of rotten weather. She could call her mother in Florida, beg Kathleen to soothe her with tales of soft Miami, winters without a peep of snow. Marilyn was ashamed to dial for Florida. Kathleen would pull her outside weather reports, and Marilyn would have to pick through all her marriages, provide Kathleen with details of husbands two and three. Somebody was knocking on her father's door. Marilyn opened up.

A snowman had come for her, Manfred Coen with white eyebrows and blood-red ears. Marilyn could adapt to such a snowman. She didn't ask him impertinent questions. She shook the icicles off his camel's hair coat. She set his trousers on the radiator cover. She gathered up the ends of her skirt so she could rub his eyebrows with warm material. She put a turban made of washcloths over his ears. The snowman didn't have the sense to wear galoshes. She got him out of his shoes. She wrapped his feet in Isaac's towels. The snowman gave a sneeze.

“It's a witch's tit outside, a whore of a day.”

“Chauvinist,” Marilyn laughed. “Can't you think up a few male items? … like scummy snow, or a witch's balls. How did you get past Isaac?”

“I didn't have to.” The snowman blinked “Isaac sent me over.”

Marilyn's chin rose off the snowman's knees. “Then this wasn't your idea? You arrived because of Isaac?”

“Marilyn, that Rupert kid's been reaching out Isaac says he's after your throat. You need a bodyguard, and Isaac figured …”

“Get out of here.”

Marilyn threw her hairbrush at the snowman. She ripped the turban off his ears. Coen hopped on Isaac's linoleum.

“Fucking Blue Eyes, don't tell me what Isaac figured. Isaac figures shit Don't you ever do your own bidding? Errand boy. Damn him, first he keeps us apart, and now he pimps you over to me. What's he going to come up with next? Does he want me to put out for the whole Police Department? Tell him a girl can get awful choosy about her dates. I'll try a new pimp if he doesn't watch out”

“Marilyn, maybe it wasn't so evil. Isaac knows how much you'd hate having a cop around … he thought he could make it more bearable if the cop was me.”

“Coen, take your pants off the radiator and put them on. I don't fraternize with bodyguards.”

Coen went for his trousers. He got one leg in before Marilyn wrestled him down onto Isaac's daybed. He could feel the tremors in her fist, the squash of her thigh, the frenzied weight of her attacking body. She was all over him, elbows, breasts, and knees. Coen wouldn't defend himself. Marilyn spent her energy beating up a snowman. Her old hysteria had come back. She was stuck in Riverdale again, with blizzards in her head, implacable snow walls between Manfred and her. She didn't recognize the cop; pure blue eyes couldn't bring her out. Marilyn was immune to hypnotic specks of color. She felt a hollow in the snowman's chest; she crawled inside.

Marilyn awoke with a blink that worked itself into the roots of her nose. She could smell a man's flesh. She wasn't naked, no, but she was out of her skirt. Blue Eyes had turned her into a papoose. She was tucked to the bed in a woolly blanket She could barely move her arms. “How long did I nod off?” she said.

“Maybe an hour,” Coen answered from the radiator. He had a fat lip, scratches on both sides of his face.

“Was I awful to you?”

“Not so bad.” The scratches wiggled out when Coen smiled. “But I had to tie you down. You were thrashing pretty hard.”

He loosened the blanket for her. “I'm sorry,” she said, fighting back the urge to touch Coen's lip. “I always freak out before a big snow.… Manfred, sit with me.”

Coen sat across from her, mindful of the storms she could conceive with her elbows and a swiping finger. “Marilyn, I would have come without a push from Isaac. I was trying to sneak away. He had me running into corners. He bounced me to the end of the borough. I couldn't eat a meal sitting down. I followed the moon skipping for Isaac. Then he locks me inside with Stanley Chin. I was sleeping with ping-pong balls.”

“Shh,” she said. “You don't have to explain.” She crawled up to Coen's knees. She must have become a witch in her father's bed. The scratches on Coen's face were arousing her. She wanted to lick the wounds she'd made. It wasn't out of gruesomeness. Marilyn didn't have the instincts of a torturer. She was raw to Coen. She'd murder her father if it would save Blue Eyes. Crazy thing, she couldn't have exposed her feelings for him without marking up his cheeks. Coen was still babbling.

“Marilyn, I should have stalked Rivington Street, snatched you coming off the stairs, pulled you uptown. Kidnaping is my specialty … only it had to be outside. He's my boss. I couldn't invade Isaac's premises.”

She would have pounced on him with the affection of a woman who'd outgrown three husbands, but she knew this would scare him off. Coen was suspicious of her. She had to move slow. She reached around him with her neck and kissed the swelling on his lip. It wouldn't have been a proper strategy to take off his clothes. Marilyn pecked outside his undershirt. She sucked on an ear. How do you wake a snowman?

Coen was coming alive. He blew spit into the spaces under her cheekbones. He nibbled the shells of her eyes. He wouldn't grind at her with his trousers on. The cop had gentle ways. But she could feel his prick through the gabardine. His tongue began to snake into the corner of her mouth. The wetness chilled her teeth. Her armpits bled a powerful water that was like no ordinary perspiration. Coen had sweetened her with his tongue in her face. Marilyn wasn't used to such slow kissing. “I could love you, Manfred.” She had nothing more to say.

Headquarters was besieged with copies of
The Toad.
Someone, presumably Tony Brill, had piled them on the front steps, indifferent to snowballs and the mud on a cop's shoe. Cowboy's men must have been the first to gather up these wet copies. Twitching with thoughts of revenge, they distributed bunches of
The Toad
to every floor. Brodsky sat outside Isaac's office with a muddy newspaper on his hips. The chauffeur was incensed. That fat worm Tony Brill cluttered the second page with photographs of Rupert Weil, and an exclusive report on the three lollipops. Rupert was snarling at the camera, in the overstuffed uniform of a housing cop.

Brodsky couldn't read without moving his lips.
The Toad
offended him. A rag, Brodsky concluded, a goddamn hippie rag for pinkos and society whores. He had never seen such a mishmash of swearwords and bleeding type. Tony Brill talked of children's crusades, lollipop wars, and the martyrdom of Esther Rose. He accused Isaac of “fucking the brains of all New York” To amuse his readership he'd scratched a primitive cartoon of Isaac pissing on Delancey Street Pictures that mocked his Chief (Isaac had flabby testicles in the cartoon) couldn't make Brodsky laugh. Brill was a maniac. He swore Isaac had ruined, or was about to ruin, Philip Weil, Mordecai Schapiro, Seward Park High School, Honey Schapiro, Cowboy Rosenblatt, Stanley Chin, Esther Rose, the Puerto Rican people, the Spagnuolos of Brooklyn, the citizens of Chinatown, and Manfred Coen (Brodsky chortled at the mention of Coen). Only Rupert had escaped him, and Rupert was making war. Who else but a lollipop, said Tony Brill, would have dared represent the grievances of his borough?

Brodsky knocked on Isaac's door. The Chief summoned him inside with a dreamy hullo. Isaac had to be hatching a plot, or gruff noises would have come down on Brodsky's shoulders. The Chief was sitting with
The Toad.
Brodsky seemed reluctant to interfere with the traffic in Isaac's head.

“Isaac, should I attend to Tony Brill? It's a ripe time. People can drown in snow.”

“Leave him alone,” Isaac muttered. “He can't hurt us.” Then Isaac came out of his gloom. “The kid'll make me notorious. They'll tremble when I across the street. Didn't you know? Crime disappears wherever I walk.”