Bitter Bronx (14 page)

“I had a hunch, Your Honor. And it paid off.”

The judge was still furious. His nostrils seemed to suck up all the air around him.

“Jurors will retire to the jury room. Bailiff, escort them out.”

The district attorney's men didn't even put up a fight. The courtroom was cleared. Marcellus was staring at Irene.

“Marla, couldn't we have a drink with Little Miss Red Shoes?”

“Marcellus, if you ever go near my paralegal, you'll return to Westchester without your nuts.”

4.

H
e was fifty years old, with the haunted handsomeness of Steve McQueen. He wasn't interested in starlets and gorgeous lady chemists. He went after waifs. He would seduce them with lines from Emily Dickinson about a wounded deer and voyages into eternity. And then he would pounce. There was nothing flamboyant about his moves: a single flower, dinner at a quiet bistro, and then a slight flutter in one eye as Dr. Jekyll turned into Mr. Hyde. It would have been comical, the tryst in a hotel room, the flower dug into the waif's hair, until he started slapping her around. But Marla's Indians had always been there for damage control. Hector and Paul would wash the girl's face, give her ten thousand in cash, send her home in a cab, wake Marcellus out of his torpor, and drive the billionaire to his Westchester estate.

These shadow men had their own rage. They would have loved to cripple Bloom.

“Get rid of him, Marla. He's bad news.”

“But he keeps us in candy,” she said. Yet she was startled by her own wanton ways. Hector and Paul had kept a “rogues' gallery” of slapped girls on their smartphones. These waifs were all wounded deer with frightened eyes. And now Mr. Hyde wanted to add Irene to his list. He pursued Little Sister with swatches of poetry tucked away in her e-mail like Valentine missiles. Marla had to sit down with Marcellus under the King Cole's rich brown light.

“You son of a bitch, she's my sister. I don't want her beaten up.”

“You can't stop me from seeing Irene. She isn't in kindergarten.”

“Oh, yes, she is,” Marla said, scooping up a fistful of burnt almonds from the bar and tossing them into her client's face. She rushed back to Central Park West in a Lincoln Town Car. Irene stood in the foyer, putting on her eyeliner in one of Daddy's hammered-gold mirrors; the mirror was worth more than a little fleet of Town Cars. Lollie stood beside Little Sister, knotting her silk scarf.

“It's obscene,” Marla said. “Mother, I thought you can't bear the sight of Little Sister.”

There was such a look of contempt in Lollie's eyes, and meanness, that Marla nearly stumbled and had to step back.

“You haven't noticed a thing, have you?” Lollie asked, with the hauteur and pride of a homecoming queen. “I've grown fond of Little Sister—in your absence, dear. You're at that sinister law firm seven days a week.”

“That sinister law firm pays for your upkeep, Mummy.”

“While you rescue stranglers,” Lollie said.

“And Marcellus Bloom is one of those stranglers. So why are you encouraging Irene to go out with him?”

“He's not a strangler,” Lollie said. “He sent me flowers. And he looks like Steve McQueen.”

Now Irene stepped away from the mirror, like another homecoming queen. She wore a red dress with her Louboutins. Her arms were sleek and shiny. She could have been a red pearl.

“You're jealous, Sis, jealous that Marcellus wants me—you've always been jealous.”

“But you've seen his file,” Marla said, in a voice that was little more than a whisper. “He preys on women.”

“Yeah,” Irene said, “and let's hope he preys on me.”

And Little Sister sailed out the door. Marla couldn't reach Hector and Paul. Neither of her Indians had a landline, and when she dialed their cells, she heard a loud whistle that nearly shattered her eardrums. She considered calling the cops—or the district attorney's office. But she couldn't blab on and on about a crime that hadn't been committed. They would laugh at her. So she had to wait, wait, wait . . .

Irene returned a little before midnight. There wasn't a mark on her face, but her eyeliner was smeared. She'd been sobbing.

“If he touched you,” Marla said, “I'll . . .”

“You'll do what, Sis? Sue his ass. That will be some case. Will you put me on the stand,
counselor
?”

“What happened?”

“Nothing. That's the problem. We had some munchies at the King Cole. He kissed my hand. He wants to meet us both.”

Jekyll and Hyde
, Marla muttered to herself.

5.

I
t was the little ravaged land that Marcellus preferred for his escapades, a line of anonymous motels along Eleventh Avenue, where drag queens often met their rich clients; the area was cluttered with stretch limousines and abandoned bikes. The two sisters arrived by cab. The cabbie fled that desolation as fast as he could, even after Marla tipped him twenty dollars. Her hand was shaking. They entered the Sunshine Inn.

Hyde's Headquarters
. They'd come to a bunker at the end of the world, with a neon sign, a littered courtyard, and mean little slits of glass in the front wall. She should have brought her shadow men, but she couldn't find them. The sisters were all alone.

“Can you believe this dump?” Irene asked.

The lobby had a single chair with a plastic cover, and the motel manager sat behind a metal grille. All that metal pocked his face, and he looked like some satanic creature sitting in the shadows.

Irene mentioned the billionaire, and Satan smiled.

“Ah, Mr. Marcellus. He's expecting you.”

His eyes washed over the two sisters with obscene expectations.

“That guy has all the luck . . . hookers with red shoes.”

Marla raged at him. “Shut your mouth.” She dug into her purse and removed a card that her shadow men had given her from some detectives' fraternal order. Marla held the card close to the metal grille. “I can have your brains served to you on a silver platter.”

“Sorry,” the manager said. “I didn't . . .”

He buzzed them through a metal-plated door. Irene began to giggle.

“Sis, you scared the pants off him.”

But Marla began to brood in the hall. The carpets were mustard-colored, and the walls had sinister chalk stripes that seemed to mock her Armani pantsuit.
She
was the criminal, not Marcellus Bloom. Marla had created the monster, allowed him to flourish. He should have been locked away a long time ago, with Marla in the next cell.

She knocked on the monster's door and entered with Irene. He'd turned his lair at the Sunshine Inn into a fortress with bars on the windows. He wore a velour robe. It was his baby-blue eyes that made it so hard to convict him, not Marla's maneuverings. She was his accomplice, his
accessory.

“My lovely girls,” he said. “My lovely girls. Counselor, where were you keeping your kid sister all this time?”

“In my pocket,” she said.

“That's not right. You have to share Irene.”

His blue eyes had a sudden blaze. Soon he would be half out of his mind. But he still had his boyish grin, even while a vein pulsed above those blue eyes.

“Counselor, I want you to let me borrow Irene.”

Marla didn't lash out at him. She was cautious now.

“But you could have stolen her—without my permission.”

His eyes went mean. His nose twitched.

“That's no good,” he said. “You have to give her away.”

“Like a bride,” Irene murmured, her face in the shadows. But Marla could feel a strange musk come from Irene—fire, sweat, and Chanel N
^o
19.

“Yeah, like a bride,” Marcellus said, grinning again. He glided about like a ballet dancer, tapped Marla once, twice on the cheek. The second tap was much harder than the first. “Marla dear, this place is locked down. It's a little complicated to get out.”

“But, Marcellus,” Irene said, “I don't want to get out.”

He laughed with a stuttering growl. “That's what I like about you, kiddo. Marla has the brains, but you have all the juice. I recognized that right away.”

Irene came out of the shadows. Marla could barely recognize her own sister. Irene had bloomed in the dark, like some exotic bulb with its own powerful heat.

“Let's get rid of her,” she said. “Sis will only be in the way.”

Marla shivered as Irene swallowed up the room with her musk.

“Sweetheart,” Marcellus said, “I can't get rid of the counselor. She keeps me out of jail. But I love the idea.”

And while Marcellus laughed, Irene took off one of her red shoes and pounded him on the head with its pointy heel. Marcellus' eyes fluttered. She pounded him again, like some celestial shoemaker.

Marla stood there, in some kind of coma. Irene grabbed her hand. “Sis, let's get the hell out of here.”

She dragged Marla out of the room. They left tracks on the mustard-colored carpet. Marla heard a buzzer sound; the metal-plated door clicked open. Hector and Paul were waiting in the lobby. They'd torn a hole in the manager's metal grille. His head poked through the grille like an obscene toy. One of his eyes wandered. He could have been a dead man with a wandering eye.

“Marla,” said one of the shadow men, “we let you down. Marcellus sent some Homeland Security agents after us, and we were out of commission for a little while.”

“Damn it,” Marla said. “Are you both illegals? I'll have to pay a heck of a fine.”

“Shhh,” they said, “it's all been rectified. And we'll straighten out this mess.”

They sent the sisters home in a cab. Irene kicked off her red shoes. The cab arrived on Central Park West. The doorman saluted Marla. She and Irene rode upstairs in an elevator car with some earth goddess hammered in silver into the rear wall; the goddess was surrounded by silver grapes. The building had gone up in the '20s, made of burnished red stone; it had once been a haven for silent film stars. One of the stars had leapt off the lip of her penthouse after the talkies ruined her career.

Lollie was waiting inside the door; she looked deranged. Her nightgown was hiked up, and Marla could spot her mother's purple kneecaps.

“Where have you been? I was worried half to death.”

“Mummy, we were with Steve McQueen.”

“You shouldn't make fun of me. I'm an old lady.”

Lollie began to whimper. The two sisters walked their mother to her bedroom. The reservoir shone in the dark like a big fat jewel and blanketed the bedroom in a green glow. That eerie color clung to the crevices of Irene's face, turned it into a lantern. Marla bathed in all the wonder. Irene fluffed out Lollie's pillows with her fist. Then she slid Lollie under the covers and tucked her in.

“You won't leave me,” Lollie whimpered. “You'll wait until I fall asleep.”

She was like a wounded animal with purple kneecaps. Marla caressed her mother's knees.

“I lied,” Lollie said. “Irene wasn't seventeen pounds. She was a gorgeous baby—too gorgeous. She never, never cried. . . . Irene, your father kept rocking you in his arms. You were his wolf cub.”

Marla had a fit. “She wasn't a wolf cub, she wasn't. . . . Irene was a little girl.”

“Yes,” Lollie whimpered. “I shouldn't have lied . . . but don't leave me.”

Marla wanted to run, wanted to flee Manhattan and all the little traps of criminal justice.

“We'll move to Seattle,” she said. “Marcellus will never find us there.”

But Irene held her in the grip of that green glow.

“And what should we do, Sis? Work for Wikipedia? I slaved my ass off to become a paralegal. We're irresistible in court.”

With our red shoes
, Marla muttered to herself

“I'm confused,” Lollie said. “What's in Seattle?”

“Nothing, Mummy,” Marla said. “Lattes and a lot of hills.”

She could still see Little Sister pound Marcellus with the heel of her red shoe—the blows kept landing again and again, but it felt as if Marla's skull were on fire. And that fire would always be there, no matter where she went or what she did.

DEE

D
ee remembered her first trip to the Bronx. She must have been six or seven. Daddy's driver, Somerset, drove them up from Manhattan in the limousine. She kept looking out the windows, and she realized now that she'd always been clicking, clicking with her eyes long before she had a camera and a light meter. Daddy was the director of Russeks Fifth Avenue, where the nabobs of Manhattan bought mink coats for their mistresses. Daddy was also a trustee at the Hospital and Home of the Daughters of Jacob. The home was on a hill in the Bronx, and it looked like a beleaguered castle with dull red walls and fire escapes that wavered in the wind.

The castle was filled with demented people in nightgowns, and Dee was riveted to them; she was as mischievous as any camera, as she devoured these shuffling old men and women with every bit of her being. The men had white unkempt hair, the women long braids knotted with rubber bands. Some of the women kissed her father's hand, flirted with him, addressed him in a language that was like a love song. Daddy was their savior. He sent them scraps of mink from Russeks that they wore as turbans in this hospital and home. He had brand-new radiators delivered to their rooms. But Dee wasn't at all interested in her father's philanthropy. She wanted to live here, amid the peeling walls, the constant sting of urine, the flatulence, and the overripe sweetness of decaying flesh.

Somerset had to pull her screaming out of the hospital's halls. The sickly faces had frightened her, yet she dreamt of touching the wild patches of hair that belonged to these old men. There wasn't one face as bewildering or as beautiful along Central Park West, where she lived in a monstrous cave of fourteen rooms at the San Remo.