Marilyn the Wild (6 page)

“Impossible. Isaac, why argue? We're both soldiers. You have your precincts, I have mine. How's your daughter? Did she make a good marriage this time?”

“She's okay,” Isaac said, with coffee in his teeth. “She has an architect.” Could he tell the landlord that Marilyn was running wild? That she was on the loose with lollipops stalking the streets?

“And your brother Leo, is he out of his troubles yet?”

“Leo's doing fine.”

The coffee oozed through Isaac's system, causing the skin on his knees to curl, and whishing into the pockets around his eyes. Isaac would have sold his daughter for a second cappuccino. The Garibaldis had him in their grip.

“Isaac, I hear your boyfriend has his own pillow at Headquarters. Now he doesn't have to snore in the Commissioner's lap.”

“Landlord, I can't count all my boyfriends. Identify him for me.”

“Newgate.”

“Jesus,” Isaac said, coming out of his coffee lull. “How can Newgate hurt you? He'd drown in the puddles if the PC didn't hold his hand.”

“Isaac, he gives me a bad name. He frightens young Italian mothers with his ugly eyes. The mothers say Newgate's a witch. They could have deformed babies, and I'll get the blame. What's he got against the Italian race? Does he think Sicily was the devil's country? Half my buildings have busted toilets. I'm swimming in shit with my plumber's boots, and that schmuck talks about organized crime?”

“Complain to Cowboy, not me. Cowboy's the one who loves the FBI's.” Isaac sucked at the bottom of the mug with the spaces between his teeth. “Amerigo, keep your goons on your side of the Bowery. If I catch them near Essex Street, they won't be in any condition to search for lollipops.”

He got up without fantasies of destruction in his head. He wouldn't spit on dominoes, smash the espresso machine, bring the Garibaldis to Headquarters. He had no grudge against Amerigo Genussa. He walked around the tables and landed in the street.

5.

M
ARILYN
didn't mourn her penniless state. Shuffling from Bellevue to Coen's to the Crosby Street jail, she narrowed her problems down to the question of logistics: how could she avoid her father on her father's turf? She sat in Bellevue with her Jewish grandmother, surrounded by bottles and tubes that could draw the wastes out of Sophie and drip vital sugars into her body. Sophie's bruises had turned yellowish. The coma she was in wasn't absolute. She would come out of her sleep to frown at the pipes in her nose and signal to Marilyn with her dry tongue. Marilyn couldn't gauge the extent of Sophie's recognition. Was Sophie calling for a nurse or mouthing “Kathleen,” the name of Marilyn's mother?

“I'm with you, grandma Sophie. Kathleen's daughter. Your grandchild Marilyn.”

She escaped the stare of interns and orderlies on the prowl. Isaac could be behind the door. He had a whole catalogue of spies to trap her with; men in hospital coats, detectives wearing powder and a false moustache, who would point a finger at Isaac's skinny daughter and cluck for the Chief. She saw this type of man scrounging on Crosby Street. She was carrying cookies for uncle Leo that she made with flour from Coen's single pantry shelf. The man had pieces of charcoal around his lips. He tried to mimic the auras of a bum. He blew on his knuckles, tore at the threads of his coat, bit hairs off his wrinkled scarf. Marilyn laughed at the flaws in his disguise. The cop had protected feet: only a police bum would walk around in Florsheim shoes.

A crease near the eyes disturbed Marilyn. “Brian Connell,” she said without embanassment She knew him from Echo Park, and her junior-high-school days. She'd had several “sweethearts.” Brian was one of them.

“Mary?” he said. He couldn't understand how a girlie could pinpoint him under a coat, a hairy scarf, and a blackened face.

“I'm Marilyn. Marilyn Sidel.”

The cop blew on his knuckles again. He had gorgeous teeth. Memories of Marilyn ruined his charcoal complexion. His cheeks burned with color as he recollected a bony girl with big tits.

“Marilyn, it's insane I should meet you at the bottom of Manhattan. I'm with the anti-crime boys. I work out of Elizabeth Street The bosses are sitting on our heads. They'll murder us if we can't produce the mutts that hit your grandmother. That's why I'm in my Bowery clothes.”

Marilyn felt silly shaking the paw of an old, old boyfriend, someone who'd licked her flesh eleven years ago. Brian had never been shy with her; now he rocked on his Florsheims, knuckles in his mouth. He's afraid of my father, Marilyn guessed. She showed him the cookies. “I have to deliver them to my uncle. See you around, Brian. Goodbye.”

Brian moved his jaw in a cunning way. He wouldn't release Marilyn's hand. He had to bend one knee to hide his erection from her.

“Marilyn, don't be brief. We could divide Marble Hill and the North Bronx between ourselves. We share the same freaky past. Have a beer with me.”

Brian contemplated a quick romance. If he could get close to Marilyn, blow on her nipples until she was crazy about him, he would have an opening to Isaac. Brian needed a big Jew. (None of the Irish rabbis at Headquarters had picked him up.) Isaac was the First Deputy's whip and high chief of all the rabbis, white, black, and Puerto Rican. Brian couldn't fail once he had Isaac for a “father-in-law.” So he escorted Marilyn to a bar on Spring Street, fondling his visions of a detective's shield.

The barkeep winked at Marilyn, and stuck a bottle of gin in Brian's arm. Cradling the bottle, Brian waltzed around the bar stools in his floppy coat He had to gesture three times with his long neck before Marilyn would follow him into the back room. “I thought we were drinking beer,” she said. The door clicked shut behind her.

“Brian, this is a real Bronx reunion. You haven't changed any of your tricks.”

“It's damp at the bar. In here we can have some quiet.” Brian was in a quandary: should he make her first, or squeeze promises out of her to whisper his name and badge number in Isaac's ear? “Marilyn, tell me about your family.”

“What's there to tell? I'm a victim of combat fatigue. I've been through three husbands. Brian, how many wives do you have?”

Mother of Mercy, she's still a fucking tramp, Brian sang to himself. He made no attempt now to hide his erection.

“I'm single, Marilyn, I swear. Which husband did you like best?”

Marilyn had to lie. “I can't remember.” She wouldn't tell him about the husband she adored, her first one, Larry, a blond boy with a lisp, whom she brutalized with her affectionate rages and jealousies. Reared by Kathleen, the real estate goddess, and Isaac the Pure, she'd been much too tough for a blond boy. The beautiful Larry ran away. Coen, the blue-eyed orphan, could remind her of him.

Brian sucked on his bottle with an angel's smile. He was thinking of gangbangs in cellars, weightlifting rooms, and the woods of Isham Park, with Marilyn satisfying each and every star of the Inwood Hill Athletic Club, her lean body trembling under the impact of Brian and his friends, who could assuage their dread of purgatory with the knowledge that Marilyn wasn't wholly Irish. The boys interpreted her willingness to undress as a spiteful Jewish streak.

Brian rinsed his tongue in sweet alcohol. His smile turned sullen, giving his teeth a wolfish edge. Marilyn's three husbands enraged him. Whore, bitch, he babbled in his head, she's always going down for bunches of three. He poked a finger into Marilyn's blouse. The finger stood on her collarbone. Brian didn't know where to explore. His brains were swollen with gin.

Marilyn removed the finger from her chest without cursing Brian. She wasn't mean. She bad cookies to deliver. She saw Brian's cheeks explode. The gin was in her face. The blouse came off her shoulders in one hard rip. Brian's knuckles mashed against her cheekbone. She had little mousies under her eye. She wanted to vomit blood. Brian stooped with his thumbs in her hips, and Marilyn's skirt fell under her knees. The cloth around her ankles prevented her from kicking him. She made feeble shoves with her elbows. Brian knocked her to the floor.

He was struggling with Marilyn of Isham Park. He could eclipse husbands, wedding bands, and marriage beds with the mesh pants he took from her and rubbed in his fist She was Brian's whore child. Isaac didn't exist. The split of her bosoms, the trembling line of her ribs, the rise and fall of her complicated navel, proved to him she was a creature of the cellars, someone with tainted blood and a vague history. He pushed her knees apart and dug with his hand. He tolerated scratching elbows and the mischief of a whore's fingernails. He kept his knuckles in Marilyn's eye. He snapped her head back with a tug of her scalp. He punched her until she grew quiet.

Marilyn tried to think of Larry. But she started to cry. So she thought of Coen. She imagined the shape of his neck, the aroma of talcum powder on Amsterdam Avenue, the feel of Coen's blond knee, and the pressure that knifed down from her bosoms to her shanks eased a bit. Brian figured she had to be crazy when he heard her mumble “Blue Eyes.”

His partners caught him reciting Hail Marys behind a pile of beards. They dragged him out of the property closet, glowering at the scratches on his face. These were the anti-crime boys, and they couldn't afford to have their reputation besmirched by a religious freak. The house bulls would laugh at them. Their own sergeant would pass them off as imbeciles. They were sworn to find the lollipop gang, to impress Headquarters with their ability to work undercover and wear a sensational disguise. “Brian, wake up.”

He clasped his partners' knees and cried into their trouser cuffs. “Isaac is gonna kill me.”

“Brian, what would big Isaac want with you?”

“I fucked his daughter,” Brian said.

They smiled and looked at Brian with new respect.

“She's a bimbo who collects wedding rings. I had to beat her up.”

His partners were horrified. They shook Brian off their cuffs. Big Isaac could reach into any precinct and squash a cop in bum's clothes. But if Isaac found Brian Connell, he might sink all of them. “Get back into the closet,” they said.

Brian crawled on his belly like a snake in a wool stocking. Loose hair from a moustache on the shelf drifted down to him, and Brian had to sneeze. It was nasty in the dark. He promised the Holy Mother two consecutive novenas if She would make Isaac disappear. The closet opened. He could see into his partners' mouths. “It's only Blue Eyes,” they said.

They hauled him out again, tickling him under his holster. Brian guffawed. “Isaac's afraid of us. He sends his rat to meet with me. I'll bury Coen. Just watch.”

Coen had baffled the anti-crime boys. He came to their precinct with stubble on his chin. They remembered him in herringbone; Isaac loved to groom the First Deputy's spies. His squad of manicured detectives had become a legend in Manhattan stationhouses, where a cop learned to distrust any sweet-looking boy without a little dirt under his nails. But Coen was in a lumber jacket and pants that were as grubby as Brian's. The anti-crime boys hunched near the walls so that Coen could have a direct path to Brian in their locker room.

“Brian Connell?” he said in his natural voice.

Brian didn't like being greeted by a nasal man. He knew he had quicker hands than Blue Eyes. He stuck his service revolver in Coen's jaw. “You think you can shame me in front of my own squad? Who told you to speak my name? You'd better ask permission, Mr. Blue Eyes.”

Coen didn't blink with a Police Special in his jaw. The gun's nose was grinding into his back teeth. The boys near the wall whispered something about coroners and morgues for Coen. Brian couldn't get Coen to grimace. The corners of his mouth wouldn't turn. The disintegrating flecks of color in his irises had little to do with Brian. Coen's eyes whirled independent of the locker room. Brian put the gun away. He sensed the futility of his bluff. Blue Eyes was merciless.