Blue Eyes

by Jerome Charyn

  “Elmo, how’s the slavery business? Where’d you put Child’s girl?”

  “Go to sleep, man.”

  They sat without touching, maybe three inches apart, Elmo blowing on his rings, Coen wishing he could forget Pimloe and catch homicides again, until Arnold arrived from the left and bumped Elmo into Coen. Elmo raged. “Bringing Puerto Ricans into my bus?” Arnold had already dropped a two-dollar bag of heroin into Elmo’s ashtray (the shit came from Betty). He waited for Coen to move on the pimp. Arnold wasn’t jittery. He had dirtied Cadillacs before. Elmo chewed his own spit. He hated scrounging between a cop and his stoolie. He snarled first. Then he saw Arnold’s sword. Coen was amazed. The pimp couldn’t control his knees. Only a crazyman would carry a sword on Times Square. Elmo wasn’t safe around such dudes. They were capable of slashing his seat covers. “Guzmann’s the one you want.”

  “Why Guzmann.”

  “He’s feuding with Child.”

  “Vander says he never met César.”

  Elmo lost a little respect for the sword. He played with his spit. “How long have you been working for him?”

  “You think César snatched the girl?”

  “Not César. But he could tell you where she is.”

  “Peru?” Coen said.

  Elmo sneered openly. “There’s no trunkline to Peru.”

  “Give me César’s address.”

  “I can’t, Coen. I swear. He has a string of apartments. For his crap games. He floats with the games. That’s why you can’t pin him down.”

  “Are you stalking the Carbonderry School for César? The place on Eighty-ninth.”

  “Eighty-nine? Man, you won’t find me up that far.”

  “What about Child’s niece? Odile. You know her?”

  “The chick with the long legs and the narrow crotch? She’s into cat flicks. She goes to The Dwarf a lot. It’s a gay bar on Thirteenth. Strictly for the girls. Coen, you’ll need a pass to get in. The lady bouncers don’t honor a cop’s badge.”

  “I’ve been inside The Dwarf, Elmo. Tell me, are César and Child feuding over the rights to Odile?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  Arnold sulked in the taxicab going up to the seventies with Coen. He wished he could have questioned the pimp. He was wearing three socks and a broken slipper over his bad foot. The sword lay across his knees. “Manfred, you should have asked him more.” Arnold nagged him every five blocks. Coen was grateful anyway. He couldn’t have opened Elmo by himself. They stopped at Arnold’s single-room hotel. “Manfred, take me to The Dwarf.”

  “Spanish, I’m not going to The Dwarf today. I’ll take you if I go. I’ve had enough.”

  Arnold limped into the hotel. Coen shouted after him. “Spanish, should I bring you some gypsy pudding?”

  “I’m not hungry,” Arnold said from inside the stoop.

  “Do you want to watch me hit at Schiller’s?”

  “Not today.”

  Coen was no longer in the mood for ping-pong. His thighs would get cold in his navy trunks. Schiller would remind him how many times Coen’s table had to be scrubbed. And he didn’t want to touch The Dwarf, no matter how much Odile could help him. Three years ago Coen had staked out The Dwarf from a panel truck that belonged to the First Dep. He had even taken pumps, skirts, and hair out of the surveillance closet to get inside the place. Smelling a cop, the bouncers frisked him at the door. Coen had left his holster with Isaac. He was clean. He danced with a librarian out of Brooklyn. The librarian had lovely bosoms and a hand that could relax the bumps along Coen’s spine. He clamped his legs to keep his erection down. He was already half in love. He agonized over telling the librarian he wasn’t a girl. She would spit at him. The ‘bouncers would tear out his arms. Both of them were burly girls. His throat had grown hoarse from having to whisper so often. The librarian counted on his infatuation. She expected money from Coen. She was on salary at The Dwarf. Coen pressed Isaac for a raid. Isaac dawdled with him. Coen went back to the panel truck. Finally Isaac told him the raid couldn’t go down. A deputy commissioner had queered it for them. Some big fish in the Mayor’s party had a twin sister who practically lived at The Dwarf.

  Coen decided he would visit his remarried wife. So he walked over to Central Park West. The doorman told him Stephanie wasn’t upstairs. “I have her key,” Coen lied. He opened Stephanie’s lock with the set of burglar picks Isaac gave him, fumbling in the hall for the right pick. He snacked out of the icebox, spreading fancy Dijon mustard over a soda cracker and drinking a glass of Portuguese wine. Charles Nerval, Stephanie’s other husband, had grown rich in the East Bronx exaggerating Medicare claims at his dental clinic. Coen got out of his pants, put his holster aside, and found one of Charles’ woolly robes. He had gone to the High School of Music and Art with Stephanie and Charles. Coen, who could trace an egg and draw his father’s knuckles, got in because the school was desperate for boys. Charles, whose father was a ragman, played the violin. Stephanie played the flute. The prize of older boys, she seldom talked to Charles or Coen. She went on to Oberlin, lived with the dean of music after her degree, raised tulips in Ohio, had an abortion, came home to New York, met Coen in the street, married him. Coen relaxed in Stephanie and Charles’ tub, his wineglass on the sink. He tried Charles’ Vitabath, and sat in foam up to his jaw. He didn’t hear Stephanie come in. “Bastard,” she said in front of her girls—Alice, three, and Judith, four—wearing identical gray jumpers. “Who gave you permission to break in here?”

  She was pleased to see Coen and ashamed to admit that the girls liked him better than Charles. He frowned and begged kisses off Judith and Alice. If he hadn’t been preoccupied with Elmo, he might have raided the five-and-ten for the girls, escaped with licorice, orange slices, and peppermint lumps. Stephanie set towels for Coen. A fecund girl, she had wanted children with him. Coming off the peculiar death of his mother and father, Coen shied away from long families. Now, removed from Stephanie, he loved the two girls and wouldn’t allow them to call him uncle, only Dad or Freddy Dad. These devotions to the girls also drew Stephanie to Coen. She had never gotten over the pure coloring of Coen’s eyes.

  “Freddy, the girls shouldn’t see you naked like that.”

  “Who says? I’m under the suds. Don’t they peek at Charles?”

  She gathered up Judith and Alice, took them to their room, turned the humidifier down to low, pulled out their toy trunk, and came back to Coen. He was busy toweling his buttocks. Stephanie admired the curled lines his abdominals made with every sweep of the towel. The hair over his belly dried in the shape of a tree.

  “Why aren’t you out looking for that maniac who mutilates little boys?”

  “I’m not very popular, Steff. The chief who’s carrying the case probably wouldn’t want me around. I might contaminate his men. They can’t forgive me for being Isaac’s pupil.”

  “How is that lonely son-of-a-bitch?”

  “Isaac? The First Dep’s new whip claims he’s working for the Guzmanns. A schmuck by the name of Pimloe. He’s been jerking me off the last few days.”

  It was this surly cop talk, exactly this, that had helped turn Stephanie off Coen; Charles had shallower eyes, he was awkward around his own girls, he had soft abdominals, but he didn’t scowl or curse out of the side of his mouth. Most of Coen’s vocabulary came from Isaac. But she no longer had to live with him, so she could be less of a scold. She touched his collarbone. Coen fetched her with the towel. They kissed against the shower curtains, his tongue in her throat. Charles didn’t know how to kiss. He would cuddle her for a minute, snort once, and fall into the pillows. With one lousy finger Coen could pick all the sensitive places from her wings down to the middle of her thighs. But she didn’t cling to him on account of expertise. In his grip, removed from her babies, her husband, recollections of her flute, she could feel the sad pressure of a man crazied by the loss of mother and father, a man beyond the pale of detectives and supercops.

  Later, feeding Charles, Alice, Jud
ith, and Coen, Stephanie felt embarrassed about the blush lines on her neck. She served the largest portions to Charles. Coen grew moody opening the jacket of his potato. He wouldn’t be hunching over a baked potato if Charles resented him more. He, Coen, couldn’t have tolerated an old husband in his midst. But with Coen around, Charles was less money-minded, more boyish, aware of his girls and his wife. He turned Judith’s napkin into a hat. He tasted Alice’s spinach. He called Stephanie “Mrs. Coen.” Coen had watched over him in high school, discouraging neighborhood boys from poking fun at Charles’ fiddlecase. Even then Charles was amused by Coen, who smelled of eggs and couldn’t draw. Despite his blue eyes and blond features, Coen was the shy one around girls. It was Charles who carried prophylactics in his rosin bag, Charles who could unhook a bra with the end of his bow, Charles who grabbed a wife away from Coen.

  “More carrots,” he grunted. “More peas. Manfred, do you ever use the pistol range at Rodman’s Neck?”

  “No. I play ping-pong instead.”

  Judith bit her ice cream spoon. “What’s ping-pong, Daddy Charles?”

  “Ask your Daddy Fred.”

  Stephanie brought the coffee mugs and volunteered to tell Judith.

  “It’s for mutts,” Coen said. “For people who hate the sun. We hit little balls on a green table with rubber sandwiches.”

  Coen went down the elevator with an apple in his hand. He saw some red hair in the bushes across the street. He ran into the park. “Chino,” he hollered. “Come on. Show your face.” Nothing came out of the bushes. “You keep shadowing me, I’ll kill you, Reyes.” Wagging his pistol Coen blustered deeper into the park. His apple got lost. He was behaving like a glom, chasing wigs in a bush. He put his pistol away.

  The Dwarf’s senior bouncer, a former handwrestling queen at the Women’s House of Detention called Janice, made herself Odile’s churchwarden and benefactress. She cut in soon as Dorotea placed a hand near Odile’s crotch. She wouldn’t allow hickeys or dry humps that close to the bar. None of the regulars, short or tall, could dance with a face in Odile’s chest. Sweeney, a slighter girl, and the bouncer’s partner and cousin, tried to soften Janice’s stand. “Sister, aren’t you coming down a little too heavy? Pick on somebody else. How come Lenore can kiss in the front room, and Dorotea can’t?”

  “Lenore isn’t dancing with Odile, that’s how come. Odile draws the sisters like flies in a sugar pot. I won’t tolerate it when I’m on call.”

  “You’re jealous, that’s the truth. You want Odile sitting down where you can watch her all the time.”

  “Sister, you shut up.”

  And Sweeney had to concede; her cousin owned the biggest pair of brass knuckles in New York. She could afford to back off from Janice without compromising her position at The Dwarf. Anyway she had news for Odile.

  “There’s a man outside looking for you, baby. A pimp with a funny shoe. I’d swear he’s that Chinaman who pesters the girls, only there’s something different about him today.”

  “Shit,” Odile said. “Shit.” She might have used stronger talk in describing the Chinaman if Janice hadn’t forbidden swearwords in the front room. Still, she broke from Dorotea to catch the Chinaman through a slice of window between the curtain and the curtainrod. She had to control her laugh or deal with Janice’s sour disposition. The Chinaman was wearing an enormous shoe on his left foot, a crooked coffee-colored shoe, a shoe with a hump in the back and the thickest sole she had ever seen; it had wrinkles on both sides along the leather, ugly tan laces with plastic nibs half eaten away, and it climbed to the middle of the Chinaman’s calf, where it bit into the trousers and ruined the line of his cuff. He also had some ratty hair in his eyes. He swayed on his hip, pivoting off his plainer, lower shoe. Odile moved over to the door, near enough to Sweeney at least, and spit warnings in the Chinaman’s direction.

  “Chinaman, you ever rip me off again, you come through my window once more, you toy with my garter belts and my movie clothes, you touch my sandwiches, and you’ll need a special shoe for your other foot.”

  The Chinaman lost his sway; he had hoped to charm Odile, show her the intricate turns he could accomplish with Arnold’s boot for a rudder.

  “Odette, I thought you’d like it. I stole it on account of you. It belongs to a Puerto Rican stoolpigeon.”

  Odile was affected by the Chinaman’s droop, by the desperation in his posture, but she wouldn’t go outside. And when the Chinaman hobbled toward her, she hid behind Janice and Sweeney. “Don’t you come close,” she said.

  The Chinaman saw Janice take the brass knucks out of the pocket of her doublebreasted coat. Sweeney was smiling too hard. She cooed at the Chinaman. “Just step over the doorpiece, Mr. Reyes. The threshold isn’t high. Come on, Chinee. Cousin has some hors d’oeuvres for you.”

  The Chinaman would only address Odile. “There’s business between us, Odette. Customers. Mr. Bummy Gilman. A few other Johns.”

  “Then call my answering service,” Odile said, peering around Sweeney’s shoulderpadding. “Leave names and dates with the operator. And make sure you quote the price. I’m not getting down with those goofballs for less than seventy-five.”

  “Zorro isn’t going to dig all this sudden shyness. Since when are you handling your own fees?”

  “That’s for Zorro to know, and you to guess. What’s between me and César isn’t any Chinaman’s affair.”

  Dorotea, Nicole, and Mauricette, Odile’s three steadiest dancing partners, arrived at the door to gloat over the spectacle of a Chinaman with one high shoe. Janice pushed them back inside The Dwarf, Dorotea taking Odile by the hand and leading her to the dance floor, six square feet of splintered boards between the jukebox and the bar. Janice controlled the music; the girls had to dance to Peggy Lee and Rosemary Clooney or retire to the back room, where they could sip rum Cokes, study the divinations in the Book of Changes, or soulkiss over parcheesi boards (the cousins wouldn’t permit any other show of passion).

  Odile was abrupt with Dorotea; she didn’t need a tongue in her ear while she was considering the Chinaman; she could still see his absurd hair under the curtainrod. She remembered what Janice could do to a drunken male who stumbled into The Dwarf by mistake, or a huffy police officer who tried to take the bar without proper papers—a broken finger, a wrenched armpit, a cheekful of blood—and Janice would be remanded to the Women’s House for her zeal at The Dwarf. Odile couldn’t explain why, but she didn’t want the Chinaman hurt. Perhaps it was his chivalry in wearing the boot. The Chinaman knew what could please her; not gifts of perfume, not mink stoles which any furrier could produce, but a freak shoe. Dorotea switched from the left ear to the right. “Sis, why don’t you explore Nicole?” Odile said. “Leave my roots alone.” She followed Sweeney into the back room. Sweeney was the only one who didn’t paw her, who didn’t lick her ears when they danced. A pair of parcheesi players, noticing Odile and Sweeney, moved to another location. Sweeney had the darkest corner in the place for Odile.

  “Having man trouble, baby? You could always come live with me. You wouldn’t starve. And you wouldn’t need pig money either.”

  Odile was humming Peggy Lee. She couldn’t get off the Chinaman. She hissed Chino Reyes, Chino Reyes, between refrains of “Golden Earrings,” Peggy’s 1947 hit. She wasn’t going to sleep with a yellow nigger, one of Zorro’s employees. Was she responsible for the stolen shoe? How could she stop a Chinaman from being crazy about her? She pushed away the parcheesi men, yawned into a fist, and slept against Sweeney’s shoulderpadding.

  6 Along Columbus Avenue he was known as the supercop. They badgered him about a lost monkey, a stolen television set, cousins who had been shaken down by the local police. After seeing a First Deputy car outside his stoop so many years (Isaac developed his best theories playing checkers with Coen), they figured Coen had an ear to the Commissioner. The woman who lived over him, a widow with a young Dalmatian, was worried about the safety of her dog. There had been an epidemic of dog poisonings
in and around Central Park, and Mrs. Dalkey wanted Coen to catch the poisoner without fail. She offered him fifteen dollars for his troubles, coming down to his apartment every morning with Rickie the Dalmatian to keep him abreast of the most current poisoning. Coen couldn’t abide the dog. He was a sniveler, spoiled by Mrs. Dalkey, in the habit of leaving pee drops on Coen’s doorsill.

  “Detective Coen, Detective Coen.”

  Coen slumped to the door in pajamas. He could hear Rickie scratch the walls and chew paint The dog nosed his way in. Coen expected pee on his furniture. He offered Mrs. Dalkey cherry soda and Polish salami. He had to provide for the dog before she would tell him anything. Rickie tore salami and drank out of a long-stemmed cup. Mrs. Dalkey couldn’t eat so fast. “Convulsions,” she said. “Mr. James’ poodle. Fredericka went off the leash. That killer infested the rock garden on Seventy-second Street. Fredericka coughed up stones. She dropped dead trying to chase her tail. Mrs. Santiago thinks she saw him. A small Puerto Rican who gives candy to infants. He lives at the welfare hotel. I’m positive. He could also be the lipstick freak.”

  “Why Mrs. Dalkey?”

  “Because a man who hates dogs is more likely to hunt little boys. Poisoners and sex criminals have the same mind.”

  Widow’s tale, Coen told himself. He thanked Dalkey for her ideas and cleaned up after the dog. He rode the IRT into the Bronx. There had been too many mentions of César Guzmann, too many mutts running around with César in their heads. He would go to the source, Papa himself, for César and Child’s girl. Papa might be planted on Boston Road but he had access to his five sons.

  Moisés Guzmann reached Boston Road by way of Havana with a brood of small boys and no mujer, or wife. This was 1939. For sixty years Guzmanns had squatted in Lima, Peru, adopting the religion of the limeños. They were peddlers, smugglers, pickpockets, all citified men. They kept Hebrew luck charms in their catechism books. They prayed to Moses, John the Baptist, and Saint Jerome. Regular churchgoers shunned them. Others looked away. The Guzmanns considered themselves Hollanders, though they couldn’t speak a word of Dutch. Before the Americas the family drifted through Lisbon, Amsterdam, and Seville. The Guzmanns of Peru had no memory of these other places. Moisés ran from Lima because he murdered a cop. Alone with five boys, he became “Papa” to the norteamericanos. He bought a candy store and moved into the back room. He sacrificed his love for guavas and pig knuckles, and taught himself to make the watery coffee and sweetened seltzer that the gringos adored. Occupied with his candies and his boys (in 1939 César was under two), Papa took seven years to establish a North American pickpocket ring. Cousins arrived from Peru. During one period fourteen men and boys lived in Papa’s candy store. The cousins married, plunged into Brooklyn or New Jersey, and Papa had to retrench. He acquired permission from the Bronx police and the five main Jewish gangs to establish a policy operation in the store. The five gangs destroyed themselves and left Papa the numbers king of Boston Road.