Marilyn the Wild (8 page)

Isaac was scratching his brain for logical enemies. He'd come to Bummy's chop house on East Broadway to interview Milton Gulavitch, a dispossessed murderer and thief with blood clots in both legs and a grudge against Isaac. Twenty years ago Gulavitch had been the “controller” of Brownsville and East New York. No dry cleaner in that long, muggy corridor between Brooklyn and Queens could survive without a license from Milton, who remained powerful in middle age because he had a legitimate means of protecting his empire: two of his brothers were homicide detectives in lower Manhattan. These younger Gulavitches, Myron and Jay, had their own slender business behind Little Italy; they fleeced Puerto Rican, Chinese, and Jewish grocers, and bloodied noses for the landlords and bondsmen of Baxter Street. Isaac, the boy detective, stumbled upon Myron and Jay, and helped send them into retirement and disgrace. Milton grieved for his brothers. He swore to take out Isaac's eyes; blind detectives couldn't squirrel into other men's affairs. He crossed the Williamsburg Bridge and waited for Isaac in Mendel's of Clinton Street, a bar inhabited by Jewish cops and hoods.

Isaac couldn't permit Gulavitch to scare him out of Mendel's bar. He was chubbier then, a boy with skin hanging off his fists. He arrived in a tweed suit, aware of the strength in Milton's thumbs, that ability to pluck eyeballs. Isaac put his blackjack and gun on Mendel's counter. He didn't want customers to think he was here on official business. Gulavitch laughed. He had nothing but thumbs in his pockets. With a deceptive, languid motion, he came off one hip to grab Isaac around the head. Isaac burrowed his eyes into the “controller's” chest, so Gulavitch had nowhere to dig. He hadn't anticipated such tactics from a boy; he left his face exposed. Isaac reached with a chubby hand. Knuckling hard, he split Gulavitch's eyebone. Gulavitch clutched his face. The customers around him opened their mouths in wonder and disgust. Gulavitch became Gula One Eye. He drifted out of circulation, his empire passing into other hands, and reappeared as Bummy Gilman's dishwasher and sweep after a lapse of fifteen years.

Isaac had contempt for Bummy, who fawned over Barney Rosenblatt and Jewish precinct captains, but he didn't come to wreck Bummy's place. “Where's Gula?” he said.

Bummy was nervous with Isaac in his bar. He couldn't get around the Chief, bribe him with lamb chops and pornographic shows. “Don't touch him, Isaac. He's senile.”

“Good. But maybe he has a few grandchildren who run errands for him. I have to know.”

“Isaac, he can't remember his name. If you blow on him, he'll fall down.”

“Don't worry. I'll catch him before he falls.”

Isaac went into Bummy's kitchen. It stank of animal fat and old men's sour pants. Milton Gulavitch was screwing warts out of a potato with his thumb. He held Isaac's attention with the furrows in a thumbnail. “Gula?”

Isaac wasn't paranoid about the old man. Gulavitch often stood outside Headquarters to curse Isaac and cry for his brothers. Lately he'd been threatening to reassemble his empire and smack it over Isaac's head. Barney Rosenblatt offered to drag Gulavitch away. Isaac wouldn't allow it.

“Gula, listen. Do you have nephews and a niece in Brooklyn? Did you encourage them to hate me?”

Gulavitch looked up from the potato. “Die, Isaac. That's what you can do for me.”

He wasn't wearing his patch, and Isaac had to stare into a blue socket, his own grizzly work. Spittle began to flow under Gulavitch's tongue. “Isaac, your prick will drop off one day, and then you'll be at my mercy.”

Isaac closed the interview. He ignored Bummy's frowns at the bar and walked to Crosby Street. Dissatisfied, without a solution behind his big ears, he was going to see his brother. He could have gotten Leo past any guard or deputy warden, but Leo wouldn't budge. Isaac didn't have to growl Leo's name. The guards brought him into the reception room, shuddering under the eyes of the Chief. Leo was an embarrassment to them; each day he wore a prison shirt, the guards had to scrape their noses on Isaac's shit list. They were very jittery men.

“Leo, are they treating you with respect?” Isaac muttered, while the guards fled the room.

This scattering of the guards made Leo glum. He didn't want to be alone with his brother. “Isaac, you shouldn't have done that. They're good to me.”

“Schmuck, they'd slap your brains if you weren't my brother. So how good can they be?”

“I don't care. It's a fact of nature. I'm invulnerable because of you.” Leo shivered like a scarecrow in his loose shirt; he wasn't even safe inside a goddamned jail. Isaac could reach into every hole. Manhattan was his honey jar.

“Leo, I saw our dad. He's alive … doing portraits. He asked about you.”

A sound broke out of Leo that was almost a snarl. “I have no dad.”

Isaac was amazed by Leo's churning jaw. “I say he's alive.… Joel, Joel. I met him twice.”

Leo clutched the little pocket on Isaac's vest. “There are no fucking Joels. Isaac, I'm warning you. Don't get me mad.”

The pocket ripped. Isaac left his brother's fingers inside the torn seams. The violence to Isaac's pocket seemed to quiet Leo. He took his fingers away so he could cry into his knuckles. “Sophie's in the hospital on account of him. She'd be a saner person if that miserable furrier hadn't disappeared. You think she would have fallen in love with a junk shop? Isaac, you had your handgrips and your chess diagrams and your great chums, Philip and Mordecai. You didn't need a thing. What about me? Brother, I was slow. I couldn't hold a line of pawns, or make improvements in the Sicilian Defense. A father might have helped.”

Isaac grew restless under his brother's scrutiny; he hadn't come to argue over the existence of Joel. And why should he have to be ashamed of ancient skills? Isaac lost his prowess in chess twenty-five years ago. He turned policeman in the reception room, beginning to probe his baby brother.

“Where's Marilyn? I know all about her moves. She visits you here. She jumps in and out of mama's hospital room. Leo, tell me who's putting her up? She's too particular to hide in a garbage can. Somebody's been keeping her day and night.”

“I can't say.”

“Can't, Leo? I don't like that word. Are you shielding her from me? Remember where your privileges come from. I'm not blind. The jailors let you sneak uptown to Bellevue. Call it kindness, Leo, but I'm the one who put the idea into their heads. Not for your sake. It's for mama. You're her special boy. I didn't want her to wake up in a stinking hospital without you around. Now tell me who the bastard is, the fuck who's got my girl? Name him for me.”

“Isaac, go to hell.”

Isaac could have throttled Leo without wrinkling his career. With the First Dep behind him, the Chief had the right to bluster with impunity. Leo's devotion to Marilyn gnawed at him. The Chief was a little jealous. Forty years I fight his battles, Isaac said to himself, and he picks Marilyn over me. Isaac's love for his brother was mingled with a kind of criminality; fondness could turn to bile in a matter of seconds. The Sidels were a bitter crew.

“Leo, you're taking advantage of me. There are tiny pricks and cunts out there who are looking to murder us. They got to Sophie. It won't happen again. But don't expect me to pamper you. I want your ass out of this jail. I'll stroke the Commissioner of Corrections if I have to. I'll fix it with your wife. Mama shouldn't have to be in a room with strangers. You stay with her until I find those freaks. Leo, I give you three days. Then I'm going to tear the jail apart”

Isaac moved across the room with hops of his broad neck. The guards peeked in. They sidled up to Leo, surrounding him with sheepish looks. “Pinochle, Leo? We have four hands today. We're ready to lose.”

Leo still had the shivers, but he wouldn't disappoint the guards. “Gentlemen, I'll deal first.” The guards searched for folding chairs. Leo tucked in the corners of the deck. He was hoping pinochle would save these men. Melding flushes and marriages might ease down their tenor of the Chief.

The guards shivered as fast as Leo. They fumbled with the deck, throwing cards away. They couldn't auction off their marriages, or bid for trumps. Isaac had murdered their afternoon.

7.

T
HE
FBI man wouldn't leave Isaac alone. He had his own pillow at Headquarters, and he carried it in and out of Isaac's office. Newgate adored the Chief. Jumping from Bethesda, Maryland, into a universe of Jews, Irishmen, and black detectives, he wanted Isaac to understand that he wasn't an ordinary Episcopalian. He claimed to be part Cherokee. Isaac's men sniggered at this bit of exoticism; the threat of Indian blood couldn't bring Newgate closer to them. He was made of straw, a Maryland idiot who stole words out of Isaac's mouth. He couldn't impress them with his talk of “burying” Amerigo Genussa and “sinking” Mulberry Street. Italians might be out of fashion in a year, and the FBI would be climbing trees for black militants and Puerto Rican nationalists.

Newgate squirmed on his pillow after a white nigger arrived in Isaac's office, a white nigger in a blue suede suit. He had never come across such a weird creature in his life with the FBI. It was Wadsworth, the albino from Forty-second Street, hiding his face from the sun in Isaac's windows. Only Isaac could comprehend Wadsworth's sacrifice: the albino wouldn't have exposed himself to the ruinous effects of daylight unless he had something important to deliver.

Barney Rosenblatt interrupted him. The Chief of Detectives blundered into Isaac's rooms, his suspenders forking with irritation. He wouldn't address a nigger bundled in blue suede. So he pretended Wadsworth was invisible, and he carped at Isaac. “Are you crazy? You bring a clown to Headquarters? Couldn't you negotiate with him someplace else? You'll give the PC a shit fit. Gloms like that leave an odor. Isaac, he'll scare the pants off my men.”

“Eat it, Cowboy,” Wadsworth said, picking dust off his sleeve.

Barney lunged at Wadsworth without taking his eyes away from Isaac.

“Out,” Isaac said. “This man's registered to me. You do him any harm, and I'll collar you so fast your tongue will fall off.”

Barney glowered behind his suspenders, at Wadsworth, Isaac, and Newgate. “Isaac, take the cotton out of your ears. This is Barney Rosenblatt, remember? I'm not Manfred Coen. You won't have a piece of wood left in your office, Isaac, if you come down on me.”

“Pistols, Barney, is that what you want? Come, we'll have a shoot-out in the hall.”

“Isaac, don't be wise.” And he trudged out, the pearl handle of his Colt wobbling like a nasty stick in his pocket. Wadsworth didn't smirk; he had no interest in Barney Rosenblatt. He could piss on the walls at Headquarters, dangle his prick in front of any commissioner. Wadsworth was immune from arrest. If the burglary squad caught him napping on a fire escape, or prowling in a shoe store after midnight, they had to let him go. He belonged to Isaac and the First Dep. Wadsworth had once been a practicing arsonist. Now he was semiretired. Not even the First Dep could rescue him if a baby died in one of his fires. So he abandoned his career as a “torch” under instructions from Isaac. He burned only vacant buildings and parking lots. “I'm sorry to cause you trouble,” he said, having to nod at Isaac around Newgate's head.

“You're no trouble to me, Wads. Would you like a cherry coke?”

“Isaac, we don't have time for beverages. I think I found a lollipop for you.”

“Where?” Isaac said, the hump in his neck refusing to rise with Newgate around.

“At a hospital in Corona.”

Isaac rubbed his nose. “Corona? Why Corona?”

“Isaac, who knows? My uncle Quentin works in the emergency room. A kid crawls in with broken arms and legs. But there aint a scratch on the rest of his body. My uncle's not a dope. That's the mark of the landlord, Amerigo Genussa.”

“What kind of kid? White or black?” Isaac said, trying to throw off the FBI man.

“Isaac, you can see for yourself.”

Isaac rounded up his chauffeur Brodsky, Pimloe, his deputy whip, and his angel, Manfred Coen. Newgate began to whine. “Take me, Isaac. I'll drop a portable lab right into the kid's bed. You can tape him, fingerprint him, test his urine and his blood.”

Isaac couldn't deny Newgate without creating a stink: the FBI man might blab to Barney Rosenblatt. “Come,” Isaac said, “but leave your lab at home.” The FBI's could pull fingerprints and semen stains out of the ground with their magic laboratories. But it was never the print you needed, and the semen usually came from cats and dogs.

Brodsky telephoned for the First Dep's sedan. He marched with Isaac, Pimloe, Newgate, and Coen to the ramp in back of Headquarters. They crossed the Manhattan Bridge, Newgate marveling at the enormity of Brooklyn, which, he believed, could swallow the whole of Maryland. Brodsky was happiest with Isaac in the car. Coen annoyed him. The chauffeur despised pretty boys. Coen was the one Isaac lent to the Bureau of Special Services when an ambassador's wife grew restless in New York. Women stuck to Blue Eyes. He was the Department's prime stud. Isaac could populate the city with white niggers, Puerto Rican stoolies, and beautiful woodenheaded boys.