Paradise Man (3 page)

“You’ve been sworn to it, Holden. By the Swisser.”

“Fuck him. I’m going to bed.” Holden walked out of the designer room, past the nailing boards of silver foxes and sables, that marvelous assembly of skins he’d never understand. A fur coat was a miracle to him. Skin upon skin, like the perfect bolting of a bat’s wing. He went into an office with his name on the glass.
S. HOLDEN, VICE PRESIDENT
. The S. was for Sidney. But no one had ever called him that. He was Holden at home, Holden at school, Holden in this fur factory.

The office was a huge loft, with windows over Manhattan. Holden moved in here after his marriage broke up. He was still in love with his wife. He’d found her in the showroom at Aladdin Furs. She was a mannequin who belonged to Nick Tiel. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. She called herself Andrushka. She was seventeen, and she was sleeping with half the buyers. Holden went crazy. He’d just turned twenty-seven. He was the boy wonder who’d been bumping people for nine years. He walked up and down the showroom with deep splits in his forehead. The buyers fled from Andrushka.

“Mister,” she said, “who are you and what do you want?”

“I’m Holden, vice president.”

“Well, Holden, vice president, you’re scaring my best customers away.”

She was a little taller than Holden liked, and built like a twig, but her hair was wild, and she wasn’t like the other mannequins, who traveled the circuit of showrooms with a bored, lascivious look. This Andrushka had a rough innocence. She probably loved every man who bought her a meal. Holden didn’t dare mention marriage. She’d start screaming.

“So talk?” she said, painting her eyes.

“I’m one of your bosses.”

“I’ve got lots of bosses, Holden, vice president.”

“I’d like to take you to lunch.”

“Salami and cheese?” she asked.

“No. Caravelle, if we can get in. Or Lutèce.”

“I’ve been there,” she said. “All the men stare down my tits.”

She had no tits. But Holden wouldn’t call her a liar.

“Then what would you prefer?”

“The kosher deli on Twenty-ninth.”

“They won’t serve you salami and cheese.”

“They will if I ask for separate sandwiches.”

He took her to the kosher deli and she wondered why in the middle of the twelve o’clock rush, with furriers everywhere, Holden got a table.

“I remember now... you’re the bumper.”

“Who told you that?”

“I listen,” she said.

They were married in three weeks. Holden had to doctor her birth certificate, because Andrushka had no legal guardian, and she was a lousy minor. Her real name was Ann Rosshoven. The Russian princess had been born in Green Bay.

They lasted two and a half years. Andrushka ran to Europe before she was twenty. She married the Swisser without divorcing Holden. He dreamt of murdering them both. But it was one hit that would never happen. He lay down and watched
The Deer Hunter
on his video machine. Then he started
Destry Rides Again.

The phone rang at five in the morning. He recognized the wind and static of a European call.

“Holden, are you up?”

“Wait,” he said. “I’ll turn off the cassette.”

The machine froze on Marlene Dietrich’s face.

“What can I do for you, Swiss?”

“It’s a pity you’ll have to postpone Paris for a while. Somebody’s daughter is missing. And you’ve been elected to locate her.”

“I elect my own projects, Swiss. There’s too much notoriety attached to this one. I might disappear after the package has been returned.”

“Your safety’s been assured,” the Swisser said.

“Too bad.”

“Holden ...”

“What?”

“You’re an original, and I tolerate your bad manners and all your moods. But I’ve promised you, Holden. And I can’t go back on my word. You’re invaluable to this project.”

His head throbbed. Where the hell is Andie, he thought, his Andrushka, wearing silks with an eighty-year-old man?

“I’m freelance, Swiss. That was our bargain. I can say no.”

“Not when it involves the lives of our friends.”

Holden understood the Swisser’s Morse code. The Mafia didn’t like the idea of Italian mavericks stealing a district attorney’s daughter-in-law. It killed their bargaining power with all the U.S. attorneys who were after their skin. The Pinzolos were making the Mafia look like pigs.

“Why can’t our friends use their own material? They have the best merchandise in town.”

“Don’t play dumb with me, Holden. They can’t afford the publicity right now.”

Was Andrushka undressed? What time was it in Paris? One in the afternoon? She wouldn’t rise before two.

“I’ll think about it, Swiss. I had a hard afternoon.”

“There’ll be a bonus. That bundle you were carrying. Half of it is yours.”

The Swisser was nuts. A hundred and twenty-five thousand for some bitch no one had heard about until today? The best Mafia piece man would have done it for free in honor of his padrone. And they had to reach for Holden. Because they couldn’t get near the wild man, Red Mike, and his brothers.

“Swiss,” Holden said through that wind in the wire. “We have a problem. I can’t go in wearing a mask. The daughter will see my face and tell the district attorney.”

“No harm in that, Holden. He won’t disturb whatever angel brings her out.”

“What about the other side? I’ll have a family of crazies on my back once it’s finished.”

“That family doesn’t have much of a future. The garbagemen will go to their graves. The daughter’s the ticklish thing. We can’t have her damaged. We need some custom work.”

The wind cracked in Holden’s ear and the line went dead.

He didn’t think about daughters-in-law. Not even the Pinzolos he’d have to kill. He thought about the man with Andrushka, eighty years, and that Swisser would outlive Holden.

He tapped his video machine and Dietrich’s face unfroze. She was round and lovely, not like that twig he’d married. Destry Rides Again.

H
OLDEN GOT OUT OF BED
at noon. He didn’t need a file card on Red Mike Pinzolo. He’d had target practice with Mike and his brothers, Eddie and Rat, a month ago. They used the old police range at Rodman’s Neck. An Italian detective was always smuggling them in. Mike was the family’s main enforcer. He controlled half the garbage routes in Queens. He’d walk into some restaurant and kill a rival with thirty men and women eating around him. All the witnesses went dumb. Abruzzi couldn’t indict him. But Mike’s father, a kindly old man who fed Holden gnocchi he’d made with his own hands, was caught trying to strangle a bartender who happened to be an undercover dick. Red Mike considered that unfair. Two of his sisters had been fingerprinted and shoved inside a detention cell. Mike wanted Abruzzi to understand the insult of having your father and your sisters fondled by cops.

A neighbor had once stolen Mike’s parking spot. He brooded for a month and then shot the man’s home with a submachine gun. It was this romantic, Red Mike, who had the district attorney’s daughter-in-law.

Holden began seeing her picture in the papers. Fay Abruzzi, who’d gone to Swarthmore College with Abruzzi’s boy. She was a year younger than Holden, thirty-six. She’d been a sociologist until she had her second child. Red Mike had plucked her off the streets of Manhattan. The Post called her the Vanishing Ph.D.

She wasn’t Holden’s type. She wore eyeglasses and her figure was much too full. He almost sympathized with Red Mike. But it was a stupid act. Crooks should leave civilians alone.

Holden went to his spies. It took six days to uncover Red Mike. The idiot had brought Abruzzi’s daughter-in-law to a house in Far Rockaway, a half-deserted stretch of summer bungalows. Holden didn’t have to wonder why he’d found Red Mike. The cops and all the Mafia families were helping his spies. It should have been a honeymoon hit. But he was too damn fond of Mike.

He rode out to the Rockaways in a Lincoln that was registered to a dairy farm in Pennsylvania. Goldie had come along. He was Holden’s package man. He provided guns as well as silk ties. Holden couldn’t trust some kid with a suitcase of hot guns to sell. Goldie’s guns came out of a freezer that couldn’t be traced. They were assembled for Holden, custom-built. Goldie himself buffed and filed each grip. Because Holden’s life would depend on how he pulled.

He had to go against three crazy brothers, and Goldie had given him a Llama .22 long, just like the Parrot wore in Queens. It was a good sheriff’s gun, accurate and swift to the touch. Holden always took his target practice with a .22 long.

“It’s not Eddie and it’s not the Rat,” Goldie muttered. “It’s Mike. Mike will smell us from the beach.” His mouth began to quiver.

“You promised me you wouldn’t cry,” Holden said.

“Who’s crying? I’m worried about Red Mike. You won’t get past the door.”

“You promised me,” Holden insisted. “If I took you along, you’d sit like a gentleman and wouldn’t twitch.”

“I am sitting like a gentleman.”

“Then how come your whole face is moving?”

“It likes to move,” Goldie said. “You need a back-up man.”

“You get killed faster with a back-up man. They’re always fucking up. You have to start thinking about them, and it hurts your timing. I’m better off alone.”

“Not against wacked-out brothers who’d steal family from a D.A.”

“They had cause,” Holden said. “Abruzzi stole from them.”

“Yes. A father who strangles people. Sisters who’ll cut off your arm if you look at them the wrong way.”

“They’re still family,” Holden said, and Goldie held his trembling lip as they traveled on Seagirt Avenue. Holden stopped the car along the beach. Goldie listened to the tear of the ocean. He thought of London and his childhood digs. He’d been a thief since he could remember, swiping nails and bolts from an ironmonger, hurling them into the damp sky. His bones were always cold.

“Goldie, are you in a trance?”

“It’s not important. I was recollecting a few nails out of my rotten past.”

He removed the .22 long from an old paper bag. Holden took the gun and stuffed it into his pants without inspecting the magazine. He knew Goldie had licked every bullet in its copper jacket. Nothing had ever gone wrong with a tailor’s .22.

“Don’t you consider following me inside, Goldie.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it. But kiss me,” the old man said.

They hugged in front of the car like a couple of bears.

“I never failed you, Goldie.”

“I know, but I’m getting superstitious. A kiss brings good luck.”

Holden walked toward a line of shabby summer houses and Goldie got back into the car. He had a second .22, a Llama short, in the glove compartment. He didn’t care what promises he’d made. If Holden didn’t come out in a reasonable time, Goldie would have to give his regards to Red Mike.

“Careful, God damn you,” he muttered as Holden halted outside a bungalow. A body appeared in the door, lean as a snake.

Holden nodded to Red Mike, whose hair wasn’t noticeably red. He had lighter skin than his dad, and must have seemed like a ruddy man to the rest of the Pinzolos.

“Hello, Frog,” he said from the door. “Have you come to kill me?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Then come on in.”

Holden climbed the steps of the bungalow with the Llama high against his waist, so there wouldn’t be any confusion about the gun. Mike had a Walther PPK 7.65 in a cream-colored holster under his heart. He’d picked up that gun at the movies. It was a James Bond Special. Red Mike had modeled himself after Sean Connery ever since junior high. He hated Roger Moore. He felt as if the Secret Service had betrayed him when Roger Moore grew into 007. And he was the one man Holden would allow to call him Frog. Red Mike had given him that name because Holden spent the first three years of his life in France.

He entered the bungalow. Eddie and Rat stood in the living room with deer rifles trained on Holden’s groin. They were older than Mike, had little mouths and little, searching eyes.

“Mikey,” Rat said, “should we lend him to the sharks?”

Red Mike smiled under his dark brown mustache. He had three mistresses and two wives. It depressed Holden to think of all the widows he’d have to make.

“Relax, relax,” Mike said to his brothers, pointing one of the rifles away from Holden’s crotch. “It’s a friendly chat. We haven’t gotten to the bargaining stage.”

“What’s there to bargain about?” Eddie asked, his eyes searching hard.

Holden loved all three brothers. Eddie with the crazy eyes. Rat who always had tonsillitis. And Red Mike, who’d taught him to hold a gun.

“There’s plenty to bargain,” Mike said, patient with his brothers. “We don’t even know who sent the man.”

“It don’t matter,” Rat said, with a sudden surge of intelligence.

Mike pinched his mustache. “What’s wrong with you? Didn’t you eat stracciatelle with this man? Frog never fucked us. The D.A. did.”

“Mikey, Mikey,” Rat said. “He’s the D.A.’s boy.”

Mike turned to Holden, his mustache flaming in the sun that broke through the porch. “Frog, is that right? Did the D.A. deputize you?”

“I never worked for Abruzzi.”

“It don’t matter,” Rat said. “It comes to the same thing.”

“It’s not the same thing ... Frog, the D.A. is practicing genocide on my family. You know that.”

“But if you hadn’t touched his daughter-in-law, I wouldn’t be here.”

Mike’s eyes went beady the way his brothers’ did. “Frog, who’s sitting in your car? Some ice man you brought? I pity the bastard.”

“It’s Goldie. He came along for the ride.”

“You should have said so. Invite him inside. He’ll have some spumoni with us,” Mike said, fondling his holster. And Holden shivered under his shirt, shivered for Goldie. He shouldn’t have brought his tailor on the job. And then Rat intervened.

“Mikey, should we show him the little darling?” Rat said. “She can have some of our ice cream.” He left the living room, returned with Fay Abruzzi, and began to titter with Ed. The daughter-in-law wasn’t wearing any clothes. Holden didn’t go searching below her neck. But he couldn’t avoid the woman’s breasts. She had big shoulders. There weren’t any bruises on her arms. She looked at Holden and lowered her eyes.