Marilyn the Wild (9 page)

A dumb Maryland Cherokee like Newgate could only come alive by touching Isaac's sleeve. Isaac taught him how to sniff. He would plant evidence in your shoe, blackmail your sister, force Coen to romance your mother or your wife, until you could do nothing but cry out your guilt. This was' Isaac the Pure, who didn't waste his scruples on a thief.

They arrived at St. Bartholomew's, a dinky hospital off Corona Avenue. The hospital couldn't accommodate big police cars. Brodsky found a parking spot across the street. Wadsworth had no badge to show the hospital clerks, so he walked behind Isaac, with long, pinched lines developing in the suede. The five of them burrowed into the main ward, past nurses, orderlies, and patients in rumpled gowns. Isaac was looking for a boy in traction, with his arms and legs in the air. The search became futile. They caught an old man pissing behind a screen. The man threw a pill bottle at Isaac; it struck Newgate over the eye. Isaac closed the screen.

Wadsworth led him to a boy with plaster mittens on his hands and feet; none of the mittens extended beyond the ankle or wrist. The boy was Chinese.

Coen didn't have to stare too hard; it was the boy who jumped on his chest at the Jewish youth center. He couldn't decide what to tell Isaac. The Chief didn't need prods from Coen. He examined the identification card attached to the bed: Stanley Chin didn't have an address; his age was listed as sixteen and a half. The evenness of the mittens disturbed Isaac. He couldn't be sure this was Amerigo's work. The landlord's hired goons wouldn't have restricted themselves to cracking fingers and toes. They didn't have that much finesse. The boy should have been bent at the elbows, or suffered a broken knee.

Isaac came up to the bed. His voice wasn't harsh. “Stanley Chin, do you know me?”

The boy said nothing; he watched Coen and the albino in blue.

The Chief brushed against the bed's high, criblike gate. “I'm Isaac Sidel.”

The boy pushed air through his nose and wiggled his teeth against his bottom lip. Did I collar the boy's father, Isaac wondered, did I bite his family in some horrible way? He couldn't remember capturing any Chinamen in the last five or ten years.

“Why's Amerigo Genussa after you?” Newgate screamed at the boy. Isaac told him to get back. He promised to kick Newgate past the Rockaways if he interfered again.

“Stanley, tell me where your school is? Brooklyn? Queens? The Bronx?”

Wadsworth whispered to Isaac. “The kid goes to Seward Park. My uncle Quentin got that much out of him.” Then he moved behind Coen. Wadsworth was getting jumpy in the hospital. A white glare came off the walls. He couldn't function without the buzzing of a movie screen. He was addicted to technicolor and dust on his face. He'd have to beg Isaac to ship him home pretty soon.

Isaac sensed the slithering motion under the suede. But he couldn't free Wadsworth until he pressed the Chinese boy.

“Stanley, did you know I went to Seward Park? I graduated in 1946. No lie. I spoke at the school a few months ago. Do you remember that?”

The boy wouldn't respond to Isaac; he rubbed the mittens on his feet while scrutinizing Wadsworth's pink eyes and colorless hair. The albino had bewitched him. Brodsky nudged Isaac on the wrist. “Chief, you'll never make this kid trading school stories. Ask me to step on his fingers, or let Manfred kiss him in the mouth.”

Isaac didn't have the chance to scold Brodsky. The head nurse, an enormous black woman with a pound of starch in her midriff and her sleeves, descended upon all five of them. “What the hell do you mean busting in here without my permission?”

Brodsky answered her. “Lady, this is Chief Sidel of the First Deputy's office. He goes where he wants.”

“Not in this hospital, fat man.” She turned on Wadsworth. “Who the hell are you?”

The starch bristled in Wadsworth's eye, confounding him. He squeezed between Brodsky and the FBI man. Newgate fished for some identification. “Madam, I'm with the FBI.”

“Jesus God,” she said. “How did you lunatics get inside the door?”

Newgate's Cherokee blood bleached his nose red. “Nurse, you can check me out. I'm Amos Newgate of the Manhattan bureau.”

“Sure,” the woman said. “And I'm Mother Goose.” She hovered over Newgate, her midriff buckling against her breast pocket. “That boy's hurt. He don't need crap from you.”

Isaac would have liked to borrow this nurse; she might hold Barney Rosenblatt away from his door. Pimloe was strangely quiet. The deputy whip usually fronted for Isaac, shagging different pests off Isaac's back. Pimloe had to be in love, so Isaac mollified the nurse. “Mrs. Garden,” he said, reading the name tag on her starched chest. “You're right to worry about Stanley Chin. He's your patient, and we're intruders in your ward. But we believe he's been beating up old women and destroying grocery stores. I'm leaving two of my officers here. They won't touch Stanley, I promise.”

He herded Wadsworth, Newgate, and the First Deputy men out of the ward. He stationed Brodsky in the hall. “Whoever visits the kid gets a tap from you. I don't care if it's an army of midgets. Find out who they are.”

“Isaac, should I stay with him?” Coen said, his cheeks slackening with drowsy lines.

“No, I want Pimloe.… Herbert, find the resident on this floor. Tell him to keep his bitches out of our hair.”

Newgate elected to remain at the hospital. Pimloe seemed morose. “Isaac, who's gonna drive you out of Brooklyn? Wadsworth can't take the wheel.”

“Coen will drive.”

Brodsky's lips sank with contempt. “Chief, he doesn't know north from south. He'll lead you into the ocean. You'll drown with Coen.”

“Wadsworth will save me,” Isaac said, anxious to disappear from the hospital. The Chief had an errand to do. He sat with Wadsworth and Coen on the First Dep's wide front seat. Coen was hunched against the upholstery. Wadsworth kept his hands under his thighs until he had a crisp view of Manhattan. Brooklyn was a meager island in Wadsworth's head. It didn't have the proportions of a solid world. In Brooklyn the ground could sink.

Coen dropped Isaac at the Essex Street houses. Wadsworth tried to jump out of the car. Isaac was reluctant to grab some suede. He blocked Wadsworth with a knee. “You'll offend my man if you don't sit.”

Wadsworth seemed afraid to sit alone with Blue Eyes. Deep colors made him crazy. The albino convinced himself that a blue-eyed Jew could only be a witch.

Isaac was in the mood for old boyfriends. Stanley Chin had thrown him back to Seward Park. The Chief scrambled for Mordecai and Philip, recollecting conversations on the roofs, fistfights over Trotsky and Stalin, chess tournaments that ruined Mordecai's appetite and made Isaac cockeyed for a week, as Philip dazzled them first with a strange opening and clubbed them over the head with his bishops and his rooks. Isaac had been fond of Mordecai, nothing more. Philip was his rival. He couldn't touch Philip in chess, or harm his defense of Trotsky's beautiful face. Isaac had always been a creaking Stalinist.

It was aggravation over Philip that caused him to abandon chess. Isaac studied the masters, absorbed the fierce play of his three gods, Morphy, Steinitz, and Alekhine, but Philip overshot all of Isaac's theories with his rough knowledge of the board; Philip moved with a crazy, internal music that contradicted Isaac's chess books. And Isaac fell to brooding. His three gods had befouled themselves. Morphy, an American boy, once the shrewdest player in the world, drifted into voyeurism during the last years of his life; he would peep out of a closet dressed in women's clothes. Steinitz, a Jewish midget from Prague, a man with spindly knees who revolutionized chess by discovering the patterns of opening play, died unloved in a beggar's grave on Ward's Island. Alekhine, the Russian genius, fled his country to play master chess throughout Europe and South America in a state of constant drunkenness, pissing on the trousers of an opponent, retching over chess clocks, and becoming the champion and sainted fool of Nazi Germany.

Philip himself went “blind” at twenty-four, lost his feel of the pieces, neglected to safeguard his king, grew restless at the board, and dropped out of tournaments. Philip became a businessman, selling lightbulbs and toilet articles to East Side stores, a husband, a father, and a recluse. His family life wasn't so different from Isaac's; both of them had stray children. Philip's boy was a stubborn genius of fifteen who could clobber his father at chess since the age of nine. Isaac decided to chat with Philip and interview the boy; he was hungry for news of Seward Park. Maybe the boy could enlighten him about Stanley's gang, and Isaac could also cry to Philip about his missing daughter, Marilyn the Wild.

One of the housing cops recognized Isaac in front of Philip's building. The cop was slightly lame, and the pieces of his uniform didn't seem to fit his body. “Chief Isaac,” he shouted, “if you're shopping around for the lollipop freaks, try a new project. I control this house. Those bandits wouldn't mess with me.”

“It's a social call,” Isaac muttered. “I'm visiting Philip Weil.”

He rode up to Philip's door. The buzzer wouldn't work, and he had to keep knocking until his fist went dead. “Philip, it's me … Isaac” The door opened for him. He couldn't get in without hunching himself around Philip's back. “Mordecai says you've been asking for me … Philip, what's the matter?”

Isaac could pull Mordecai by the nose, pluck Mordecai's daughter out of a pimp's garbage can, but he couldn't get near Philip. Philip didn't have stubble on his cheek, or the symptoms of a decayed chess master. He wore an impeccable shirt with buttons made of elephant bone and a collar strengthened with metal clips. Isaac couldn't begrudge the crease in Philip's trousers, or the neat fall of his cuffs. Philip was a stay-at-home who dressed to kill.

He'd kept his boyishness. He hadn't succumbed to Mordecai's slow fattening, or Isaac's accumulation of hard flesh. His persistent love of Trotsky and his old mania for chess must have protected him from the most common ravages. Philip lived in a closed box.

He made coffee for Isaac and himself that nearly burned Isaac's tongue. Isaac couldn't believe a man would drink such bitter stuff. He dreamed of cappuccinos at the Garibaldi social club. “What's your problem, Philip? I should have come before … three little bastards hurt my mother, and they've been on my mind.”

Philip had a disturbance in his collar, a slight, nagging twitch that may have spread from a bone behind his ears. “We got lucky,” Isaac said, his eyes on the turbulent collar. “I think we caught one of them. A Chinese boy. Philip, imagine this. He goes to Seward Park.”

“I know. It's Stanley Chin.”

Philip held the collar down with his thumb. Isaac was looking mean. “Who told you that? Philip, did you fly in from Corona this morning? Are you a patron of St. Bartholomew's? Have you been blowing through the wards?”

“No. Rupert's with the gang. He's their leader.”

A shudder ripped from Isaac's jaw, putting dark creases in his neck. Philip's boy was a lollipop. Isaac grabbed for the buttons on Philip's shirt. “You fucking shit, is that why you've been sending kites to me from Mordecai?” The buttons sprang from Philip, and Isaac squeezed elephant bone in his fist. “Philip, if my mother dies, I'll give you a permanent earache. Crippling isn't good enough. They'll bury you with pawns in your eyes. You'll have all the time in the world for chess.”

Philip didn't shiver with Isaac breathing over him. “Isaac, I couldn't tell you direct.… I was paralyzed. I hoped you'd come to me. I thought it was a local craziness, something he'd get over quick. Raiding stores in the neighborhood. For what purpose? When I heard what he did to your mother, I saw it was too late. Isaac, nobody escapes you for very long. I've been waiting for you to kill me, Isaac.”

Isaac threw the buttons on the floor.

“What the fuck are you talking about? Philip, I'm not going to be your avenging angel. You'll suffer on your own. Give me facts. I don't want your lousy opinions. Why does Rupert hate me?”

“Isaac, I've never said a bad word about you to him.”

“Maybe that's the problem. Philip, who's the cunt? The girl who runs with Stanley and Rupert.”

“That's Esther Rose.”

“Where does she live?”

“Isaac, she lives in the streets. Esther doesn't have a home. She used to belong to the Jewish Defense League. They kicked her out, I'm pretty sure. She was too crazy for them.”

“A JDL girl? Rupert must keep a photograph of the little cunt. Where's his room?”

Philip took him into a room cluttered with pamphlets, cigar boxes, chess boards with broken spines, ping-pong bats with scars in their rubber flesh, posters advertising nudist colonies, backgammon, and guerrilla warfare, all sitting on a mound of books that hid Rupert's dresser, Rupert's closet, Rupert's lamp, and Rupert's bed. Isaac searched through the mess, up to his knees in books. He juggled a ping-pong bat, muttering hard. “Rupert ought to play with my man Coen. Coen's a whiz. Coen could seduce a polar bear with his strokes.” He found a stash of photographs in one of the cigar boxes. “Is that her?” he said, pointing to a girl with frizzy hair, full bosoms, and big brown eyes.