Paradise Man (15 page)

“By thievery. Someone paid him and his
puta
to hold her for us, because we couldn’t attend to her while we ran from ’Mundo.”

“But they weren’t such terrific parents. They would have finished me while the girl was under the table. Huevo, she would have seen the blood.”

“It couldn’t be helped. ’Mundo was murdering all my godmothers.”

“Then what is she to you?”

“She is family, and family does not concern
coños
and
putas de madre.”

“I didn’t plan for her to be there. Why punish me for what was no more than an accident?”

“We do not believe in accidents. Every life, señor, has its own string. And you have caught yourself in the child’s string. You cannot wiggle away. And if you could, it doesn’t matter. Because we cannot take her back. Not now.”

Holden smiled. “It’s not so clever to kill her guardian.”

Valentín fingered the scar on his lips. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

“And you’re the one who told her not to talk about her dad ... she’s your secret agent.”

“Señor, she is a child. And you must not discuss her motives.”

“Then bump me, Huevo. This is your park. You own the grass. You own the trees.”

“I am not inclined to hurt you tonight. But soon we will want the child. After we finish with ’Mundo. And then I will kill you. Because you have meddled in our religion... and you will strangle on my string.”

He returned the holster to Holden and left the park with his blond companion. And Holden had to laugh that such an army of
bobos
would molest La Familia, which had eaten blood during the Bay of Pigs and gathered around Don Edmundo for twenty-five years.

He sat on Huevo’s bench in the middle of Isham Park, with the moon in the trees. Small armies of young men bopped around him in the dark. They cursed and spat, but they didn’t interfere with Holden.

“Tío,”
they said, mistaking him for some lost uncle, a
bobo
who sat under the moon. And he was a
bobo,
because he’d come to El Norte and learnt so little. All he had was memories of Carmen Miranda.

H
E DIDN’T SEARCH FOR
Harrington’s car. He took Broadway and traveled down Manhattan’s spine, walked the length of the island like a man who’d never been to New York, followed a long line of Latino lights. Men and women sat outside
marketas
at three in the morning. A boy serenaded him with a mandolin. A baby girl sang to him from a window.
“Tío, tío.”
He was Uncle Holden, whose future was stuffed inside a chicken’s neck. But Broadway wasn’t like the dead boulevards of Queens, where pizza parlors closed at ten. He’d come off the prairies nineteen years ago.

He got to Oliver Street around five
A.M.,
his head beating with Cuban coffee he’d drunk along the way. He could still hear the boy’s mandolin. He didn’t plan to wake Mrs. Howard. But he had to tell her about his meet with the lord of Isham Park. El Señor Huevo-Valentín. He’d sleep on the couch until seven or so, and then he’d look for the coffee pot and surprise Mrs. H. with breakfast, like he’d done as a boy in his father’s house, when he’d sneak into their room, catch Loretta in her nightgown, with one nipple out, while his daddy snored, his arms around Loretta. The old man wasn’t angry then. That sourness fell off his face. Holden Sr. had his heaven.

Holden got up at a quarter to eight and found the coffee pot. He loaded Loretta’s grinder with beans, turned it on, and the grinder squealed at him. He worried that the noise would draw Loretta out of bed. She’d scold him for breaking into her kitchen. He measured the coffee like a rich merchant and packed it into the pot. Holden was rich. But he’d lost his appetite for money after the twig left him. He didn’t even have a summer cottage. He had a hundred suits, lightweight, washable, silk, rayon, and winter wool. But the suits gave Goldie pleasure, the suits were Goldie’s dream. Holden was like a mannequin with moveable arms.

He set out the milk to boil. He broke the muffins gently with his hands and lay them in the oven. He squeezed orange juice for Loretta and the leopard girl.
“Tío,”
he muttered to himself, preparing two trays. He didn’t have to bump. He could have been a short-order man at one of the fur market’s famous delicatessens.

He danced into Loretta’s room with both trays. She was lying on the floor. Her eyes seemed to be searching the walls. She wasn’t even undressed. She had her holster on. Her face was clawed. There were holes in her chest. Holden couldn’t help think of the design: her blouse had become a crab of blood. He looked at her with a little bit of wonder and started to cry. Holden never cried. His father had beaten him. Friends had beaten him at school. Holden never cried.

He sat on the floor next to her, touched the marks on her face. It was Cuban work. The Marielitos. But it didn’t make sense. They’d gotten close enough to scratch her and she’d never drawn her gun. She wouldn’t have invited strangers into the house.

He picked up her head and put it in his lap. “Mama,” he said. He’d never called her that. And Loretta wouldn’t have allowed it. She was his father’s whore for a while. That’s all she’d say about her career with the Holdens. But in his child’s fantasy she wasn’t one more woman in a line of bitches. She was Loretta, the sexy mom he intended to marry.

Holden rose up on his knees in a panic. He’d left a little girl in the house.
“Querida,”
he shouted,
“venga aquí.”

But his shouts were futile. Wouldn’t Santa Barbara have protected Mrs. H. if she could? He rushed into every room, whacking at the furniture, probing the little girl’s dolls. It seemed monstrous to him now that he’d courted Fay, gone to recitals, made love in the toilet, under the windowsill, near the fridge, and never bothered to see Loretta and the girl.

Love always fucks my head, he muttered. Makes me into a pig. But how could he have saved Loretta if he’d been around? She’d opened the door to one of Holden’s friends. Why? His bumper’s instinct had failed him. Nothing would come. He called his mortician, Saxe & Son.

“I don’t want to speak to one of Bernie’s partners,” he said. “I want Bern ... tell him it’s Holden.” He waited until Bernhard Saxe Sr. got on the phone. Holden had been dealing with Bern for seventeen years. Saxe & Son were morticians to the mob. They’d held a franchise with Murder, Inc. But the firm never talked of its clients, present or past. And what good was it to know about bandits and bumpers of fifty years ago? That was like cowboys and Indians, a kid’s game.

“Bern, I have a package that can’t wait.”

And Saxe arrived on Oliver Street with one junior partner and his undertaker’s wagon. He was a conservative man with little knots of hair inside his ears. He’d dealt with Mrs. Howard on Holden’s business, and he understood what that beautiful black woman with arthritis had meant to him. Loretta’s murderer might have also been his client, but that didn’t keep him from mourning with Holden.

“A terrible thing, a tragedy. I was talking to her last week. Whoever did it ought to lose his eyes and ears ... Holden, should I send the bill to Aladdin?”

“Put it on my account. I’d rather not have a bill like that in Aladdin’s books. I want prayers sung for her. But no flowers.”

“And next of kin? We could make up a memorial card. Something very smart and simple. A notice that she passed away.”

But Holden couldn’t even tell if she had brothers, sisters, sons in some manger. “Bern, I’d rather not dig ... as quiet as possible, okay?”

“It’s done,” the mortician said, clapping his hands. He draped a sheet over Mrs. Howard and began to put her on a stretcher. But Holden got in the way.

“I’ll carry her,” he said. He lifted Mrs. Howard and brought her out to the truck. She wasn’t heavy in Holden’s arms. He’d carried dead people before and had struggled under their weight. He’d almost gotten a hernia carrying his dad down Muriel’s stairs.

“Bern, I don’t have to tell you ... this is not to circulate.”

“Holden,” the mortician said, pulling at a knot in his ear. “Do you want a stone with a Star of David?”

“She wasn’t Jewish.”

Saxe frowned for the first time. “It’s quiet in the Sephardic cemetery. Less questions asked.”

“But her name has to be on the stone. I don’t want you picking something out of your undertaker’s book.”

“Initials,” the mortician said. “No names. Someone’s always getting nosy.”

“All right, initials. And say, ‘Beloved of father and son.’”

Saxe took off in his truck. Holden returned to the house. He went in to gather his file cards, but the files were gone. All he had were the cards in his pocket about the Bandidos and their gods. He didn’t even have the current phone numbers of his rats. Most of his secret service had been in Mrs. Howard’s drawers.

He could have taken the little girl’s dolls, but they wouldn’t bring luck without the girl. And he didn’t need mementos of Mrs. Howard. He’d have her perfume in his nostrils for the rest of his life.

Holden marched to Hester Street. The six Chinese seamstresses sat bent over their machines. Holden could have been a shadow to them, a nonmaterial thing. They never looked up from the garments they stitched for Goldie. And Holden wandered in to see his tailor. The maestro stooped over the plans for a suede coat. He had pins in his mouth. He’d gone completely out of this world. He wasn’t like Nick Tiel who tailored for the love of money and the original touch of his designs. Goldie took more delight in his counterfeit suits than Nick could ever know. He looked up from the suede to see that darkness Holden had, like a trigger that had gone off inside Holden’s body. “What happened?”

“Mrs. Howard’s dead ... and whoever killed her took the little girl.”

“When?”

“I’m not sure. I’ve been delinquent, Goldie. You heard about the fire at Aladdin. I moved out ... with Abruzzi’s daughter-in-law. Mrs. H. was wearing her holster when she died. She never even pulled out her gun. She had to have let the bumper in. And there are only two men she’d have invited into the house. Gottlieb and you.”

Holden heard a cackle come out of the tailor. “Well, you can always cancel me and the girls in the front room would never notice.”

“Are you my
tío
or not?”

“What does that mean?”

“Have you been fucking around all these years, dressing me up like Doug Jr. while you monitored me for the Swiss?”

“And suppose I did? Does that make me a killer? Mrs. Howard was the love of your father’s life.”

“That’s why she’d have let you in without a thought. Goldie, who has the girl?”

“My guess? The Swiss.”

“He’s in Paris humping my wife.”

“You only think he is,” Goldie said. “He still has his throne at Aladdin. Infante and the Cubans sit at his feet.”

“And you?”

“I’m part of the enterprise. A little part. I always was. Jesus, Holden. Me and your dad started out with the Swiss during the goddamn war. He was practically our teacher.”

“Arts and archives,” Holden said.

“He ran the show. The generals were scared to meddle with him. He was trading masterpieces with Goering’s people. The Nazis wanted to invite him to Berlin.”

“And what did you get out of it?”

“Don’t knock the Swiss. He taught me how to forge. Half the masterpieces in our collection we created ourselves.”

“And my dad got stuck in shit.”

“He was careless,” Goldie said. “He began boasting to a couple of the ladies about our exploits. And he wanted to give a phony Rembrandt to some bitch in Verona. We’d have all been guillotined.”

“So you saved your ass and sent my dad into exile.”

Goldie chewed on a pin. “Didn’t we bring him out of Avignon? Got him papers and a new name.”

“And who was he before he was Holden?”

“Does it matter?” Goldie said. “He’s Holden and you’re Holden.”

“And Swiss had Mrs. Howard bumped.”

“I’m not sure of that. It’s a guess.”

“That’s why you came along with me to Red Mike’s ... you were Swiss’ back-up man.”

The tailor stuck out his throat. “Go on. Finish me if you believe that. The Swisser was behaving a little funny. The whole thing stank. You and Mike were almost twins. And Mike was a chivalrous son of a bitch. He took the daughter-in-law, big deal. He might have slept with her if she’d been willing. But he wouldn’t have forced himself on Fay. And he had enough sense to keep his brothers quiet. Swiss could have gotten to Mike, negotiated with him. But he sent you, knowing it was a point of honor between friends. I didn’t like it, Holden. That’s why I came along ... and you’d better return the bundle.”

“What for? Rex doesn’t seem to miss her much.”

“I wasn’t thinking of Rex. I was thinking of his dad, the D.A. Paul wants to wear a judge’s gown. He’s not going to take kindly to a scandal in his own house. First the daughter gets kidnapped, then she goes to the bumper who grabbed her from Mike. And he’s dreaming of a highchair on the State Supreme Court.”

“Fuck him and his highchair. It was political, Goldie. Edmundo was moving his betting parlors into Queens. Mikey stood in the way. And I’d swear the ‘judge’ was taking Cuban money.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Paul’s a clever bastard. The future was with Edmundo, not a family nobody wanted. But you still haven’t told me how my dad got to be called Holden.”

“It was the name of a character in a book. We had to call him something. Swiss decided on it. He was always reading. But it’s not your problem. You were born with that name.”

“Yeah, I’m a Swiss fable.”

“You are not. You’re your father’s son.”

“And who was my father? Swiss invented him, like he invented me.”

“Don’t say that. Swiss was very fond of your dad. He loved him in a fashion, like his very own child.”

“That’s the point, Goldie. My father stayed a child. Did Swiss ever advance him? He died a chauffeur.”

“He was content. He never complained to me.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t live with him. Goldie, ever see my father smile?”

“The man was a little gloomy, so what?”

“Gloomy? You stole his name. He couldn’t tell who he was. He drank, he whored a lot. He always had his bitches. He fucked up the one good thing in his life. Loretta.”