Paradise Man (7 page)

“Sit down,” she said. “You’re making me nervous.”

Holden collapsed into a soft chair next to the window and watched the palace roofs. The giantess frightened him a bit. He didn’t know what to tell her.

“Would you like a cake or some French seltzer?”

“No,” he said. “I’m fine.”

The giantess sat down and seemed to gobble up all of her chair.

“Holden, how come I get the honor? You happened to be in the neighborhood, or what?”

“Swiss,” he muttered. “He said it was okay to visit.”

“I wouldn’t trust his okays. He doesn’t like you very much. He’s been trying to get you killed, or are you too dumb to notice?”

“I’m his insurance policy. I collect for the man. What could he gain from getting me killed?”

“Pleasure,” she told him. “It irritates Bruno that I was once in love with you.”

“If it irritates him so much, why didn’t he hire a boom-boom man?”

“That’s vulgar,” she said, like some matron of the arts, and he wondered where she kept her Caravaggios. Museums had ruined their marriage. Holden swore never to visit a museum again, though he’d hired a graduate student after Andrushka left, a kid from Yale, to teach him the fundamentals of modern art. He looked at his bride again. She wasn’t really a giantess. The twig had gained twenty pounds.

“You listening to me, Holden? Swiss doesn’t need a boom-boom man. He sends you out on exercises because he wouldn’t cancel your career without a profit to himself. It’s not his fault you run into hellholes and come out alive.”

“He pays me for all the risks,” Holden said. “I have bank accounts in sixteen cities. I could go to London and buy a house.”

“Dead men don’t need houses.”

“I’m not so dead I can’t see you have a terrific appetite in Paris.”

“That’s just normal eating, Holden, and being away from you ... how could I finish a steak when I couldn’t tell if I’d have a corpse on my hands from one day to another.”

“I never caught you crying,” he said, feeling more and more at Andrushka’s mercy.

“I cried, all right.”

“Where? In the museums?”

“Shut up about museums,” she said. “You didn’t want a wife with culture. You wanted me to wait at home while you were beating up on people. You would have been happy if I didn’t say a word.”

“That’s not true. I loved it when you talked.”

“Talked about what? Hats and shoes. You shivered, Holden, when I mentioned Cézanne.”

“I wouldn’t shiver now.”

“Is that why you came around? To impress me with your progress? How could I breathe inside a coffin? That’s what it was like living with you.”

“You call eight rooms over Central Park a coffin?”

“Imbecile,” she said. “I’m not talking about a view.”

“And Swiss has culture, I suppose. He was nothing but a crook with arts and archives. He sucked eggs for a lot of generals, just like my dad.”

“You’re so dumb you can’t see the difference. Swiss used your father to blind those generals and bleed them dry ... Holden, did you come here to save me from the Swiss? He appreciates a woman. You didn’t even know what wine to serve. And who was going to teach us? Holden, we never had a chance.”

“What’s so hot about a millionaire who swallows prune juice for lunch?”

“Prune juice keeps him regular. He makes love to me morning and night.”

“I didn’t ask for the details,” Holden said.

“I’ll bet you didn’t.” And she leapt out of her chair with lines of fury in her forehead. “Were you counting on a kinky afternoon, huh, Frog?”

“Don’t call me that.”

“But that’s what you are, Holden. A nasty little frog. I have a husband, thank you. I don’t need your gifts.”

She left him in the living room, shutting doors between Holden and herself. And he was stranded with a palace in front of his eyes. He turned from the windows and began to notice paintings on the walls. Schatz had built a fucking museum for Andrushka. Holden tried to remember all the art tricks that kid had taught him. Apples and oranges. Cézanne and Miró. But he couldn’t recognize a single painting.

He walked down into the rue de Vaugirard. He couldn’t find his shadow. That bumper must have gone for a ham sandwich. Billetdoux. And Holden was caught in the dream of Andrushka. A man with yellow hair stepped in front of him, and Holden, who could always sniff trouble out on the street, in Marseilles, Milan, or the two Berlins, was unprepared. The man fell into Holden’s arms. His body twisted around. He had a bullet in his neck. He coughed and the bullet came out. He fell deeper into Holden. Billetdoux was behind him, holding a popgun with a muffler that was half the length of his arm. The bullet must have sounded like a sparrow’s cry. Holden hadn’t heard a thing.

“Who is this poor slob?” Holden asked as Billetdoux stripped the popgun and dug pieces into his pockets.

“Don’t know,” he said.

“And you popped him? Just like that?”

“I had a feeling,” Billetdoux said. “He followed me while I was following you.”

Holden protested. “I would have seen him. I’m not a kid.”

“Your eyes were in your ass,” Billetdoux said. “Will you dance with him? People will notice he’s nearly dead.”

Holden held up the man, who coughed in his arms. “Billet, the guy could be a perfect stranger.”

“Of course,” Billetdoux said, pulling on the man’s coat until a spear with three prongs dropped out of the sleeve. “Recognize that?”

It was a fisherman’s claw that the Bandidos would use to destroy a man’s face.

A police car stopped in front of Andrushka’s building. This wasn’t Manhattan where Holden could buy his way into some police lieutenant’s pocket, or count on his killer attorney. Billetdoux was a bumper from Marseilles. He couldn’t have had much of a rabbi on the rue de Vaugirard. But the flics didn’t get out of the car.

“Walk him,” Billetdoux said. “Walk him gently.” And Holden waltzed the coughing man to the police car. Billetdoux opened the rear door and Holden sat the man down on the seat. There were no tattoos on his fingers. “Come on,” Billetdoux said. But Holden pulled on the man’s lip and saw a blue mark inside the flesh of his mouth. It was the moist little heart of an executioner. The man hissed at Holden with his eyes.

“Come on,” Billetdoux said.

Holden ducked his head out of the police car. Billetdoux slammed the door shut and the car bumped along the rue de Vaugirard like some mortuary wagon.

“Billet, I didn’t know you were into the police.”

“I’m not,” the bumper said. “Those weren’t flics. They were friends of mine. The suits were rented.”

“And the car?”

“Also rented. Don’t worry. I didn’t have to pay.”

“Who’s my benefactor?”

“The Swiss.”

“I thought you work for Bronshtein.”

“I do. But I also work for Schatz.”

“Let’s have a coffee,” Holden said. And the two bumpers marched up to a café near the Place St. Sulpice.

H
OLDEN ALWAYS WENT TO
Muriel Spencer’s when he was in despair over the twig. He didn’t have to worry about any girl with a hardened look, because Muriel wouldn’t tolerate a whore in her establishment, and Holden would drink a lemonade and lie with the girl for half an hour. None of the girls ever stayed longer than six months. They’d marry one of Muriel’s clients or become an intern at a brokerage house. They were always young and narrowly built, and they never talked foul. Holden learned from his spies that Muriel had an exclusive arrangement with several finishing schools in the Midwest, but all the girls couldn’t have come from finishing schools. A couple of them were as ignorant as Andrushka had been before she’d discovered what a museum was.

Holden hadn’t returned from Paris for some polite, skinny-boned girl. He’d given up the delusion of finding another twig at Muriel’s place. But he wanted to know how come the Bandidos were so eager to have him dead. Holden didn’t believe it was on account of the Parrot and his mistress. They were rip-off artists from Miami. They weren’t connected to the Bandidos up here. The Parrot had an isolated game. Why should the Bandidos have cared ... unless the Parrot was related to one of them. Holden had to know.

His spies had fallen down on him. His secret service ought to have sniffed whatever danger there was. Half of Holden’s income went to his rats. And some moron with a tattoo in his mouth had nearly ruined Holden’s face with a fisherman’s spear. He wondered what kind of secret service the Bandidos had if they could afford to send a man to Paris. He had to grab hold of Gottlieb. But Muriel cornered him in her parlor. She was as tall and thin as the debutantes she produced. Her eyes were painted aquamarine, just like a water goddess. Holden had never desired the woman. Her manner, her whole allure, seemed to have come out of a finishing school. That was charming for a girl of nineteen. But Muriel was forty-five.

“Holden,” she said, with a slight pinch of her mouth that was a mark of naughtiness, “where have you been? Everybody wants your autograph.”

Muriel wouldn’t allow her girls to mingle with the men in her parlor. She did the selecting for you. The girls would wait upstairs in their clothes, like some banker’s daughter. They always unzipped themselves and lay like dolls while they were being caressed. Muriel discouraged all signs of passion. The girls were notorious for doing very little. That’s why Muriel married them off so quick. Her clients didn’t have to worry about the phantom of any other man. Muriel wouldn’t permit lust without marriage.

There was a lone card game in the parlor. Holden recognized Robert Infante, Don Edmundo (chief of La Familia), Edmundo’s bodyguard, and another guy, that playwright Rex. Abruzzi had brown hair. He wore suspenders and a bow tie and looked like one of Edmundo’s thugs. His nose had been broken and he had the small, baffling eyes of a dreamer. He was an enormous man. Holden assumed he was writing dialogue in his skull while he held cards at the table.

It was Infante who looked up first. “Ah,” he said, “our man is back ... Holden, I think Rex wants to shake your hand. You remember Rex. Fay Abruzzi’s husband.”

Rex stood up. He was six-five, and Holden felt like a bear cub in his presence. The playwright squeezed Holden’s hand. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

“Lend him your wife,” Infante said, and Abruzzi laughed. He had yellow teeth. The laughter traveled through him like a gigantic pipe. Holden tried to conjure up that naked woman he’d collected from Red Mike. She had big shoulders and a round face. But he couldn’t remember if she was pretty.

“Holden’s good at escorting wives,” Infante said. “He takes Florinda to lunch. But he’s getting a little too popular, right Edmundo?”

“Right,” Edmundo said, winking at his bodyguard, who was a Batista baby, like him. Edmundo had been a jeweler in Havana. He fled to Miami after Fidel came down from the hills. He disappeared into the Florida Everglades for six months and surfaced again after the Bay of Pigs. He arrived in Manhattan with his own Familia. Didn’t bemoan Castro any more. He established betting parlors, dabbled in cocaine. Holden had killed the Parrot essentially for him, because the Parrot had been ripping off Edmundo and his people. But Edmundo’s bodyguard didn’t appreciate the attention Holden got. The bodyguard despised Holden, fancied himself as Edmundo’s enforcer. But he was frightened of the Bandidos, frightened of moon, sun, and sky. He’d come out of the Everglades with Edmundo, married Edmundo’s niece, could fire a machine gun, drive a car. But the bodyguard had never bumped a man in his life. He was Edmundo’s little wax soldier, the family clown.

“Jeremías,” Edmundo said, “be kind to Holden ... he sends people to paradise.”

“He’s okay for punching women,” the bodyguard said. “Edmundo, I’m not interested in your paradise man.”

The bodyguard yawned into his cards. He knew Holden wouldn’t slap him in front of Edmundo and start a war with La Familia. The Bandidos had kidnapped him twice, and twice Edmundo had ransomed him for much more than Jeremías was worth. Edmundo was such a king, he could afford to keep a fool and advertise him as his bodyguard. But he did have soldiers in the hallway and on the roof. Because the Bandidos were crazy enough to kidnap Don Edmundo himself, and who would negotiate ransom money for a king?

“Holden,” Edmundo said, “the boy is rude. Forgive him, please.”

The bodyguard crumpled a card in his fist. “I’m not a boy, Edmundo. I’m fifty-seven. I fought Fidel ... I’m not a boy.”

“But you behave like one.”

“Because you dishonor me, Edmundo. You let this assassin do my work.”

“Shut your mouth, Jeremías. We have a guest.” And Don Edmundo smiled at the playwright and then turned to his bodyguard. “Go up to the roof and look for Huevo, eh?”

“If he decides to bother us, Edmundo, can I have him for myself?”

“Of course.”

The bodyguard got up from the table, tried to uncrumple the card, bowed to Muriel, excused himself, and left for the roof as if he were on the journey of his life.

“He finished high school, but he has no manners,” Don Edmundo told the playwright. “He couldn’t find a career in the United States. Holden has a career. Holden is important to my family, so Jeremías suffers a lot.”

“Who’s Huevo?” the playwright asked.

“Nothing,” Don Edmundo said. “A boogeyman for us. He haunts my family. You should write about Huevo ... Big Balls. That’s his religious name. He’s one of the boat people. I adopted Huevo, fed him, and now he makes war on me.”

“Edmundo, when can I meet him?”

“I told you. He’s the boogeyman. Huevo has such big balls, he never goes out on the street. He sleeps with witches and rides the roofs ... Holden, tell our friend, have you ever seen Huevo?”

“Not yet.”

“But he murders my lieutenants, shoots them in the mouth. And he won’t take money from me. He’s not a businessman. He likes blood.”

The playwright held his chin. “And what would Jeremías do if he found Huevo on the roof?”

“Scream to Jesus, I suppose ... but we’re boring Holden. He didn’t come to hear me lecture on Huevo. He’d like a girl. Holden, it’s my treat.”

“I can pay.”

Edmundo’s lips shrank into his mouth. “Don’t embarrass me in front of an artist. Rex will write about us. We’ll appear in his next play. I’ll become the sissy who can’t capture Big Balls or treat you to a girl.”