Coen’s train creaked out of the 149th Street tunnel, pushing toward the elevated station at Jackson Avenue in the Bronx. At the spot where the train first touched light the tunnel walls were clotted with a hard gray slime that had frightened Coen as a boy and still could bother him. That movement under ground, from the Jackson Avenue pillars into the flats of the tunnel, walls closing in around the subway cars, made Coen seasick on the IRT, and he would arrive nauseous at Music and Art, hating the egg sandwiches in his lunch bag. The stops from Jackson to Prospect to Intervale to Simpson to Freeman Street numbed Coen, drove him into his own head. From the Simpson Street station you could almost pick carrots off the windows of the Bronx Hotel; twice he had seen colored girls undress; he recalled the torn matting of his seat, the underpants of the second girl, the specific angle the train made with the window ledge, minimizing Coen’s view, forcing him to hold his neck at an incredible degree or lose all command of the window.
He came down from the subway at 174th Street, where Southern Boulevard bisects Boston Road. He didn’t go straight to Papa. The candy store was a main policy drop, and Coen might frighten off a few of Papa’s runners. So he gave the store enough time to react to a foreign cop in the neighborhood. He stayed across the street, near the Puerto Rican social club which served as a lookout for Papa. The club members eyed him from their curtainrod. Coen revealed a piece of his holster. He wanted the Puerto Ricans to make him. He felt relieved when they signaled to the candy store by flapping bunches of curtain. They leered at him and mouthed the Spanish word for fairy. Coen smiled. Then he moved into the store. Papa’s runners and pickup men were concentrated at the shelves devoted to school supplies. They were tallying policy slips with their backs to Coen. Nobody stirred for him. Papa was behind the counter preparing banana splits for a tribe of cross-eyed girls sitting on his stools. The girls, with thick glass in their eyes, must have been sisters or cousins at least. They thumped the stools and wailed with pleasure when Papa brought over a big jar of maraschino cherries. Being a fat policy man didn’t get Papa to neglect his ice cream dishes. He wouldn’t look at Coen until he satisfied every girl. “Sprinkles, Mr. Guzmann. Marietta expects another cherry.”
With the girls rubbing their bellies and wearing hot sauce on their cheeks, Papa came out from the counter to hug Coen. They embraced near Papa’s Bromo-Seltzer machine. He wasn’t timid about showing affection for a cop. He could kiss Coen without repercussions. No one but Papa controlled the candy store. He stayed king because of this. He squatted over his provinces with one finger in the chocolate sauce. Every individual runner, pickup man, and payoff man had to report to the candy store. Papa’s three middle sons, Alejandro, Topal, and Jorge, ran for him when they weren’t fixing sodas or frying eggs. His other collectors were South American cousins, retired Jews, busted cops like Isaac, or portorriqueños who owed their livelihood to Papa. Any runner who grew independent and bolted with the day’s receipts had twenty-four hours to redeem himself; after this period of grace he was ripe for Papa’s dumping grounds at Loch Sheldrake, New York. Whoever accompanied the reprobate to Loch Sheldrake would say, “Moses, I’m working for Moses.” In matters of business Papa demanded that his code name be used.
“Papa, where’s Jerónimo?”
“Ah, that dummy, he walked into the next borough to be with his brother. He can’t swallow a marshmallow without César. I’m only his stinking father. I bathed him forty-three years. Manfred, you remember how Jerónimo went gray at fifteen? Imbeciles worry more than we do. Their arteries dry fast. They don’t live too long. You ask me, he’s smarter than Jorge. Jerónimo counts with his knuckles, but he counts to thirty-five. Jorge can’t go over ten without mistakes. They’re good boys, all prick and no brain. Am I supposed to make fudge the whole day and forget Jerónimo? César won’t bring him back.”
“Should I collect him for you, Papa? Tell me where César is. I need him for something else.”
“He keeps ten addresses, that boy. So who’s the moron? Manfred, he’s a baby. He had to fly from here. They’ll cripple him in Manhattan.”
“How did Jerónimo find him, Papa?”
“With his nose. You develop your smell living around sweets. What do boroughs mean? Sweat can carry across a river.”
“What about Isaac? Where’s Isaac?”
Papa stared at the banana splits. “Which one? Isaac Big Nose? Or Isaac Pacheco?”
“My Isaac,” Coen said. “The Chief.”
“Him?” And Coen had to face the wrath in Papa’s yellow teeth. He’ll curse his family with devotion, Coen thought; not strangers or cops. “I leave the bones for Isaac. He picks my garbage pail.”
“Papa, since when are you so particular about one busted cop? You have pensioned detectives fronting for you, you keep old precinct hands on the street. You should use him, Papa. Isaac has the biggest brain in the five boroughs.”
“So smart he got caught with a gambler’s notebook in his pocket.”
“Somebody stuffed him. I can’t say who. Isaac won’t talk to me.”
“I say he’s a skell and a thief. I took him in because I’m ashamed to see another Jew starve on Boston Road. The city has charity. I have charity. No one can tell me Moses doesn’t provide. Manfred, how’s the uncle?”
“Papa, he looks fine. He can’t stop thinking about my father.”
“I mean to visit. I’m not comfortable away from the store. But I owe it to Sheb. He was kind to Jerónimo. You remember how your uncle could paint an egg. Him and César, they were the only two could take Jerónimo’s mind off chocolate and the halvah.”
The girls screamed for Papa; they wanted second helpings. Papa hissed back. “Quiet. You’re at the mercy of the house. Free refills come at Papa’s convenience.” He asked Coen to stay.
“Can’t,” Coen gagged; the aromas off the counter had begun to take hold. He was incapacitated by the imprint of Jelly Royals under sticky paper, lollipop trays, pretzels in a cloudy jar. Papa couldn’t have changed syrups or his brand of malt in thirty-five years; the sweetness undid Coen. He saw Jerónimo go gray. His throat locked with thick fudge. House, house, is Moses in the house? If César could steal pretzels, so could Coen. In twenty years of patronizing the store, Coen stole no more than twice. He had a fierce respect for the old man. It was Moses who wired him the money to come home from the barracks at Bad Kreuznach after his mother and father died. And it wasn’t Papa’s fault it took three weeks for the money to find Coen. Sheb knew where he was. But Sheb wouldn’t open his mouth.
“Manfred, why do you need him?” Once behind the counter Papa had to shout to hear himself over the girls. “César.”
“Information, Papa. César can help me find a runaway girl.”
“A goya or a Jew?”
“A goya, Papa.”
“Manfred, you know the dairy restaurant on Seventy-third near Broadway? Go there. Maybe eight, nine at night you’ll see the old cockers with boutonnieres. Pick up a flower and wait. It’s a dice-steering location. Get in the car with the old men. Give my name to the steerer. Say Moses, not Papa. That’s the closest I can get you. Manfred, you won’t forget Jerónimo? You’ll tell me if he likes it with his brother?”
“Papa, I will.”
Coen avoided his father’s egg store, south of the Guzmanns on Boston Road. He didn’t want to dream of eggs tonight Now a pentecostal church, painted sky blue, it was another Guzmann policy drop. Coen met Jorge outside the candy store. The middlemost of Papa’s five boys, stupid and uncorruptible at thirty-nine, with few attitudes about his brothers, and wifeless like them, he was carrying quarters in his pockets and in his sleeves; because he was poor at arithmetic and could get lost turning too many corners, Jorge walked the line of Boston Road accepting only quarter plays. Papa bought him shirts and pants with special pockets, but by the afternoon Jorge had to store quarters in his shoes. Weary in his overalls, weighted down to his heels, Jorge had no appetite to chat with Coen. He grunted his hellos, and tried to pass. C
oen held on.
“Jorge, where’s Isaac? Please.”
Still grunting, he twisted his chin toward the electrical signboard of the Primavera Bar and Grill on Southern Boulevard and 174th. Not knowing how to thank him, Coen jerked Jorge’s sleeve, then he jumped between traffic and entered the Puerto Rican bar. He recognized a bald man at the last stool with gray curls around the ears. The man climbed off before Coen could say “Isaac” and locked himself in the toilet. Coen could have flicked the latch with his Detectives Endowment card. He called into the opening.
“Isaac? I’m wearing your burglar picks. I could pull you out if I want.”
Either Coen heard the toilet flush, or the man was weeping inside.
“Isaac, are you front man at the bar? I’m stalking for Pimloe. Can I trust him, Isaac? Is he wagging my tail? Chief, could you use some bread?” Coen put twenty dollars under the door from the boodle Child had given him. He couldn’t tell whether Isaac was scraping up the money. The bartender glared at Coen. “No more checkers, Isaac? Nothing.” He wanted to clarify his involvement with Child, his perceptions of Odile. Coen had little to do with other detectives. He could only talk shop with Isaac. After Isaac’s disgrace Coen sleepwalked through detective rooms in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Staten Island, and Queens, shuffling from one homicide squad on his way to the next. He was Isaac’s creature, formed by Isaac, fiddled with, and cast off. He made no more overtures to the door. He tied the boodle with a rubberband and went over to the IRT.
The rookies Lyman and Kelp were cruising the Bronx in an unmarked Ford, complaining about the policewomen who had been in their graduating class. They belonged to a new breed of cop—enlightened, generous, articulate, with handlebar moustaches and neat, longish hair and an ironic stance toward their own police association. Lyman was living with an airline stewardess, Kelp had a stock of impressive girlfriends, and the two rookies were taking courses in social pathology and Puerto Rican culture at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
“Cunts in a radio car,” Lyman said. “Man, that’s unbelievable.”
“Alfred, you expect them to type all day in the captain’s office? Imagine all the hard-ons they’d generate.”
“Listen, when the shit begins to fly, when it gets hairy over on Seventh Avenue, the junkies poking antennas in your eyes, the transvestites coming at you with their sword canes, these stupid cunts lock themselves in the car, and they won’t even radio for help. And control thinks you’re banging them in the back seat. Unbelievable.”
The rookies had just been reassigned; they were snatched away from their precincts and picked up by Inspector Pimloe of the First Deputy’s office. It was no glory post. Instead of undercover work, with wires between their nipples and a holster in their crotch, they chauffeured inspectors from borough to borough in a First Deputy car. They would have cursed Pimloe on this day, called him a high-powered glom, but the DI (Pimloe) had put them on special assignment: they were going to meet the First Deputy’s old whip, the legendary Isaac who had disgraced himself and left a smear on the office. But the investigators attached to the First Dep were still devoted to the Chief; through them Lyman and Kelp had heard stories of the old whip. These investigators demurred over Pimloe; they remained “Isaac’s angels.”
“Alfred, how much do you think Isaac took? Half a million?”
“More, much more. Why would he fuck his career for anything less?”
“Shit, we get Pimloe, and we could have had the Chief.”
“Man, he should have waited a few years before going down the sink with a bunch of gamblers. Can you imagine being on a raid with Isaac? Shotguns coming out of your ass. Unbelievable.”
Their checkpoint was a mailbox on Minford Place, two blocks down from Boston Road. The man at the mailbox didn’t bother signaling to them. He wouldn’t sit in the back, on the “commissioner’s chair.” He climbed up front with them. They weren’t put off by his rags; Isaac was a master of disguise. But his stench was overpowering. Lyman, the man in the middle, had to sit with his nose upwind. Kelp, who lived in a flophouse once doing field work for a course at John Jay, had more experience with unwashed men. He volunteered the first question.
“Chief, am I driving too fast?”
Isaac growled at him. “Don’t call me Chief.”
“Should I slow down, Inspector Sidel?”
“I’m Isaac. Just Isaac. Drive the way you like.”
Kelp turned the wheel with smug looks into the mirror; the investigators had exaggerated Isaac’s reputation. He was only a fat man with unruly sideburns and a balding head. A dishonored deputy chief inspector going to pot from his exiled station in the Bronx. Kelp was glad now he had never been given the opportunity to be one of Isaac’s angels. Pimloe began to flush out with esteem in Kelp’s mind. Pimloe had manners. Pimloe had a Harvard ring. Pimloe didn’t own layers of fat behind his jaw. Pimloe showed respect for a rookie. He wouldn’t humiliate you by sitting up front.
They crept toward Manhattan in a silent car. Unbelievable, Lyman thought, afraid to mutter a word. The stink drove his face into Kelp’s shoulder. Kelp welcomed Isaac’s reserve. He didn’t want to discuss tactical matters with a double-chinned cop. He watched this fat man in the glass. Let him swallow his lip. Near the Willis Avenue Bridge Isaac opened up. “How’s Herbert?”
“Pimloe?” Lyman mumbled under Kelp’s arm. “He’s fine. The whip said we should take care of you. He sends his regards.”
“Did he scratch my chair?”
“What?” Kelp said.
“The chair he sits on. In my room. Is it scratched?”
“Isaac, I didn’t notice.”
Kelp was pleased with his response; he was standing up to the Chief. Kelp had the badge now, not Isaac. He would tell his rookie friends: He’s nothing, this Isaac. I blew in his face, and he didn’t blow back.
They drove the Chief to an apartment house on East Ninety-first with two doormen and a glass canopy. Isaac went past the doormen in his rotten clothes. He hadn’t even thanked the rookies.
“What a personality,” Lyman said, able to breathe again. “The guy goes anywhere in a beggar’s suit. Unbelievable.”
Kelp had less charity for Isaac. “Good riddance. He’s a glom, can’t you see? That smell was no cover-up. Alfred, it’s for real. He’s nothing but piss and scabby ankles.”
“Isn’t this the First Dep’s house? Would the First Dep invite him in if it’s only piss? Use your brain. How are we going to earn the gold shield? The First Dep must be fond of Isaac. Maybe he’s going to repatriate him, bring Isaac back. He wouldn’t waste his time on a reject.”
“Let Pimloe worry.”
Kelp headed for the East River Drive; if he watched the speedometer they could cruise downtown at a walk and make the office while Pimloe was out to lunch; it would be malteds for them, feet on their desks, telephone calls to their sweethearts from inside their own cubicles.
“Unbelievable.”
7 At the dairy restaurant Coen wore his “gambler’s coat,” a red jacket with green piping under the pockets; he had once seen a reputable crapshooter in a similar coat. He picked his father’s favorites off the menu in the window: broiled mushrooms on toast, split pea omelette, chopped Roumanian eggplant, prune dumplings, and a seed cake called mohn. All the Coens were confirmed vegetarians, father, mother, and uncle Sheb; only the son was spared. Coen had fewer meatless days than any of them. A growing boy needs a little chicken in the blood, his father pronounced, so Coen had to eat chopped turkey, chopped liver, and chopped chicken in his lettuce hearts. At thirty-six Coen still gagged over the sight of lettuce being washed. The odor of chicken livers depressed him, and the stink of turkey made him cross.
Old men were coming out of the restaurant with roses in their lapels. They were dressed in baggy tan or gray, with stockings bunched over their ankles and scuff marks on their shoes. César couldn’t have found his calling in Manhattan if he catered to these fish. Coen worried about a boutonniere until he noti
ced a stash of pink, short-stemmed roses for sale near the cash register. He smiled at the thoroughness of César’s operation: the restaurant provides the roses. But he had trouble buying one. The cashier claimed they were for her regular customers. She gave in when she saw Coen’s eyes go slate blue, an inhuman color according to her. He walked away sniffling, with the boutonniere oversweet in his nose. He stood near the old gamblers, giddy from all the fumes. Ignoring him, they played with their buttonholes.
The steerer arrived in a twelve-passenger limousine, counted roses, and allowed Coen to get in. The gamblers occupied eight of the seats. With Coen among them, they were in a foul mood. The steerer tried to shake off their long faces. He was a fattish man in a silk girdle-vest; the vest gave him bumps along both sides. “Julie Boy, would I hit you over the head? Boris Telfin doesn’t lead his friends to a poisoned game.” Coen didn’t like the steerer’s glibness, his winks, his habit of pulling the buckles on his vest. He mumbled three words.
Blue Eyes Page 6
