Paradise Man (8 page)

“My apologies, Don Edmundo. I meant no harm.”

“Ah, Holden’s some politician,” Infante said. “Like his dad. Holden Sr. knew how to apologize with pie in his face.”

“My father loved pies. He’d always eat something with lemon meringue.”

“What happened?” Infante asked. “You come home from Paris surly as hell, insult Edmundo and me, barely say hello to Rex. Don’t even ask how Florinda is.”

“Some monkey wanted to claw my face outside the Luxembourg Gardens. I think he was a Mariel.”

“Impossible,” Infante said. “Bandidos never ride in planes. They’re religious freaks. Their gods wouldn’t allow it. And most of the Bandidos can’t spell. How would they get to the right gate?”

“Let him finish,” Edmundo said. “Holden, what makes you sure it was a Bandido?”

“He had a tattoo inside his mouth ...”

“Anyone can imitate a tattoo.”

“I agree, Don Edmundo. Thought of that myself. Only why would someone go through all that trouble?”

“To bring you into our war and create worse and worse relations between the Bandidos and ourselves.”

“Who would benefit?”

Edmundo laughed. “Half the world ... or one of my lieutenants who would like to start his own family. We’re talking ambition, Holden. And I’m surrounded by ambitious men ... take Robert, for instance. He could move his Italian friends into all my boutiques.”

“Fuck yourself, Edmundo,” Infante said. “I’m a lawyer. I create the peace.”

“But lawyers bend the language. Tuesday’s peace is Wednesday’s war.”

“Then find yourself a Cuban witch doctor. Let him write up your articles of intent.”

“Huevo has all the witch doctors. I’ll hire Rex. He has imagination, eh? ... but I was only citing an example, Robert. Don’t be offended, please. I value you and trust you. We’re friends. My point is that some
jíbaro
with a tattoo in his mouth isn’t necessarily a Mariel. But Holden still doesn’t have a girl. Mrs. Spencer, find him the thinnest creature in the house. Make her adorable, please. I haven’t forgotten his wife.”

Muriel whispered into a telephone, then she put her arm around Holden and accompanied him to the door. “The north room, upstairs. Melissa.”

The name didn’t carry much of a magic song. He wasn’t even curious. He’d have to give her a perfunctory kiss, or she’d feel insulted. But he didn’t climb up to Melissa right away. He went searching for Gottlieb. Holden discovered him in an office behind the stairs. Gottlieb wore a gun this afternoon. Any of the police inspectors who visited with Muriel could have picked the gun off Gottlieb’s chest and buried the little bastard. The boy was seventeen and had almost as many bank accounts as Holden. He was much more sophisticated than a bumper who’d been to France. Gottlieb knew about wines and temperatures for aging cheese. He’d established his own private college near Muriel. He was a nymphomaniac about books. Gottlieb read all the time. He’d been a male hustler when Holden found him on the street, dressed in princely rags at fourteen. He could feel the boy’s intelligence and Holden recruited him as a rat, placed him with Mrs. Spencer. He was a sandwich boy with the title of assistant manager. Muriel’s was a haven for La Familia, for mob lawyers like Infante, for police chiefs with a little cash in their pockets, and Gottlieb was Holden’s highest-paid rat.

“How can I get to Huevo?”

“You can’t,” Gottlieb said.

“He sent me a greeting card, a goddamn claw, and I still don’t understand. The Parrot wasn’t his people.”

“I warned you, Holden. The Bandidos are after your life.”

“Well, can’t we have a meet?”

“No.”

“Gottlieb, it’s not nice to say no. Get me to Big Balls. I don’t care who you bribe. Sell your ass.”

“What if I sold yours?” Gottlieb said.

“If that’s the road to Big Balls, I’ll take it. Come on, you can come up with one of his witches.”

“Holden, you don’t fuck with a man’s religious beliefs.”

“I’ll cross you off the payroll.”

“You wouldn’t dare. Holden, you taught me too much. I could hire a bumper to crack your neck.”

“And what if I cracked your neck, kid?”

“You’d miss me, Holden. In your heart of hearts you’d really love to make my ass.”

“I have no heart of hearts, kid.”

And Holden marched upstairs to Melissa. But Melissa wasn’t in the north room. Holden wondered if he could march back down and offer his regrets, declare that he wasn’t quite in the mood to lie face to face with a debutante, but Edmundo might laugh at him and Holden could lose his standing in the house. Where would he go when he wanted to close his eyes and sleep with a long-stemmed beauty for half an hour? So he sat on the bed with its decorated quilt in a room that could have been designed by Grandma Moses, because Muriel wouldn’t tolerate whips and boots, ceiling mirrors and garter belts on a doorknob. I’ll marry Melissa, Holden decided, make love to her in a mask.

A girl came into the room. She seemed much too throaty for a debutante. Her legs weren’t long enough. “Melissa?” But she was more like a girl out of a convent than a finishing school. She was dressed in black and Holden felt numb behind the ears because he was staring at Red Mike’s little sister, Carmen Pinzolo, with a hammer in her hand. “I’ll kill you,” she said, and he didn’t move. The hammer went higher and higher in the air. “This is for Eddie and Rat and Red Mike.” Holden, the ice man, loved that throaty girl, loved her anger, her marvelous black hair. She was nine or ten when he’d married Andrushka. She’d scribbled love letters to him when she was fifteen.

“Carmen, I had to—”

The hammer landed. Holden heard a roar inside his head. His brains were sticky. He floated in a stupor, saw his bloody skull in the room’s only mirror and socked the hammer out of her hand, said, “I love you, Carmen,” and slapped her in the face.

Blood trickled from her nose.

“I’ll kill you, Holden. Today, tomorrow, I don’t care.”

“Baby, it wasn’t my fault.”

“I’m not your baby now,” she said, leaping at the hammer on the floor. Holden kicked the hammer across the room, seized her by the neck, and brought her out of the room with blood in his eye.

Carmen twisted and tried to bite his face, but Holden shoved her head into the stairs and walked her down one step at a time. He got her into the parlor with a bumper’s crazy will.

“Hey, Muriel” he said, “does this look like Melissa?” before he crashed into the card table and scattered piles of blue and red chips.

H
E WAS IN AVIGNON
with his dad. Holden Sr. wore military boots and a sergeant’s coat. They climbed up the steps of the Palais des Papes. The palace was white, and Holden didn’t see any popes. But he saw a bridge that stopped in the middle of the water, and he wondered what a bridge like that could bring. His dad was the handsomest guy in town. Holden Sr. had different-colored bars and stripes across his chest and the palace walls were reflected in the wax of his boots. Holden wouldn’t talk French with his dad. He was an American boy. Holden and his dad were polite to all the priests and nuns who settled on the palace stairs. The priests were taking pictures. And Holden wanted one of his dad, so he could remember him in his uniform and the white gloves a sergeant major was allowed to wear. He posed with his dad for a number of priests and scratched his address on a sliver of sandwich paper, so the priests wouldn’t forget to send the photographs.

The nuns had floppy capes and their stockings gathered round their knees like stalks and Holden asked his dad if these nuns were his people. Holden Sr. said God didn’t wash His own underwear. He gave it to the nuns to wash and that’s when Holden opened his eyes, after he heard his father’s raucous laugh. “Daddy,” he muttered until he realized his father wasn’t there. Holden was in Muriel’s north room with a fancy turban on his head. The room had become a hospital station while Holden went to Avignon. An oxygen tank like a huge green bullet stood near the bed. Another machine monitored the rhythms of Holden’s heart. Jeremías, that miserable bodyguard, sat in a chair next to Holden, like some Cuban angel of mercy. Jeremías seemed glad that Holden had come out of his sleep.

“We were worried. The boss had to go and look for his hospital team. He likes you, Holden. He said, ‘Brothers, don’t let this man die.’”

Edmundo must have had his own anti-Castro medical corps, refugee doctors from the Bay of Pigs.

“Where’s Carmen?”

“The little hammer girl? She broke your head.”

“Did Edmundo hurt her?”

“I can’t say.”

And Holden clutched at the quilt. He had paraphernalia attached to both his arms. The heart machine made erratic cries.

“You crazy?” the bodyguard said. “Don’t move.”

“Get Edmundo.”

“’Mundo doesn’t have time for you. He’s taking a bath ... with Melissa.”

“Then I’ll meet him at his tub.”

“Wait a minute,” the bodyguard said. “Have some respect.” And he telephoned downstairs to the tub room. “Edmundo, Holden’s back from paradise ... he wants to see you.”

Don Edmundo came upstairs in a purple robe. His body was still wet.

“What did you do with the girl?”

“Holden, do you always growl like that when you wake from the dead? You had a terrible concussion. We had to take pictures of your skull.”

“What did you do with the girl?”

“I took her home.”

“I thought she was living here.”

“Not a chance. She was a part-time maid. Muriel hired her last week. How could she tell the girl was a Pinzolo? ... Carmen was waiting for you, Holden. She must have memorized your routes.”

“And Muriel wasn’t suspicious? All her maids are beautiful like that?”

“Holden, it’s a classy house. Lots of girls come through the door. Did you want us to keep mug shots on Red Mike’s sisters, eh?”

“Don Edmundo, get me my clothes.”

“Clothes, who wears clothes in bed?”

“I do.”

“Jeremías, help me. Holden’s delirious.”

Holden shook the paraphernalia attached to his arms. “Edmundo, I swear it. I’ll knock your whole little hospital down. I’m getting dressed. I want to see how alive Carmen really is.”

“Ungrateful one, who sat with you six days?”

“And took baths with every girl in the house. My clothes, Edmundo. And untie me from this bed.”

Jeremías fetched the doctors, three antiquated men, who buzzed around Holden and untangled every tube and wire. Holden felt like Frankenstein. A girl was summoned to give him a bath. She had short brown hair and a boy’s chest. “Who’s this?”

“Melissa,” Edmundo said.

Muriel had discovered one more twig. Melissa washed Holden with a big soapy glove, the same mysterious expression on her face that Andrushka always had. Perhaps it wasn’t a mystery, but nothing, nothing at all ... or some dark dream of Caravaggio. Melissa didn’t say a word. She had all the proper flourishes of her finishing school. She soaped his groin without ever looking into Holden’s eye.

The doctors redid his turban, unwinding yards of bandages until the room was like one long white carrousel. Took them half an hour to dress Holden’s skull. Then Gottlieb arrived with a full set of clothes. Holden couldn’t be friendly with his rat while La Familia was around.

Muriel peeked into the room. Her eyes swelled with anger and alarm. “Gentlemen, is he going out on a date?”

“I’ve recovered.”

“You’d better leave some instructions, Holden. In case you happen to die on my stairs.”

Holden Sr. had suffered a heart attack at Muriel’s. Died near the debutantes. Holden stood up. The ceiling seemed to press hard on his head. The mirror registered his likeness: a turbaned ghost in a London jacket. Gottlieb leaned against his shoulder until Holden stopped swaying. He arrived at the door and cured his vertigo with one deep look down the stairwell. He wasn’t going to fall.

Don Edmundo had a convoy waiting for Holden in the street. Cadillacs, Lincolns, and a Rolls Royce. Edmundo didn’t like to travel alone. Cousins and uncles followed him everywhere, Batista babies who sat behind bulletproof glass with 9 mm rifles. But it wasn’t a simple retinue of soldiers. Edmundo had his own storyteller in one of the cars, his own priest, women from the family compound in Westchester. He’d given up Manhattan as his
residencia
years ago. But he had offices in three boroughs, at the back of a beauty shop or travel bureau. Edmundo controlled a thousand betting parlors. Every one of his daughters had been married at the Pierre. The husbands were librarians, college professors, novelists who’d never have to starve. Edmundo was establishing his own rabbinical line. He loved the idea of having scholars in his family. None of the husbands was an outlaw like himself. That’s why he tolerated Holden’s eccentric tricks. Holden was a comanchero, a trader with a gun ...

Holden sat in the Rolls Royce with Edmundo and Jeremías, who lent himself as the driver. Edmundo shut his eyes and listened to Mozart on the way to Queens. He dealt with all the Italian chiefs through his counselor, Robert Infante, but he had contempt for the Five Families,
rústicos
without politics or art. Edmundo had become a bandit only after the Bay of Pigs. Stuck in the swamps, trapped like a featherless bird, without the American air support he’d been promised, fifteen hundred exiles against the whole Cuban army. He was wheeled through Havana in a cart, the notorious Comandante O, who’d led one of the invasion teams. He was removed from his own men and jailed with murderers and child molesters in the penitentiary at Pinar del Río, where he rotted eight months, a scarecrow in commandant’s fatigues ... until the gringos ransomed him, returned Comandante O to Miami. People kissed his hand on the street. Grandmothers blessed him while he drank coffee in Little Havana. “Comandante O.” But he wouldn’t sit on the Revolutionary Council or dream of yet another invasion with air support that would never come. He left Miami and went “uptown” to the Yankeeland of New York. All his lieutenants followed him, uncles, cousins, aunts. He didn’t have to fight for a living. He had his own Familia.

And now he was taking a bumper to Queens, an assassin with a code of ethics that Edmundo admired and deplored. Holden was a dangerous man. Edmundo couldn’t tell where the bumper’s honor would bring him. A girl brains Holden and Holden has to see that the girl’s all right. Edmundo wasn’t sure how long he could afford the luxury of such a man.