Paradise Man by Jerome Charyn Page B

He’d have come for me if—”
    “He’d never have come for you, not Mike. He’d have told the Five Families and all the Puerto Rican dons to go to hell.”
    “Edmundo’s not Puerto Rican,” Holden said.
    Carmen locked herself in the toilet behind the den.
    Holden rattled the doorknob. “Carmen, talk to me.”
    “The only reason you’re alive,” she shouted from her vantage of the door, “is that the Puerto Rican said he’d kill papa if I hit you one more time.”
    “He’s bluffing, Carmen. He wouldn’t dare. He knows I love you. And he’s not Puerto Rican. He’s a Cuban hero. Comes from the Bay of Pigs.”
    “Who remembers? I wasn’t even born,” she said.
    “Carmen?”
    “Go away.”
    Holden appealed to the other sisters with a squeeze of his eyes. They wouldn’t convince Carmen to come out of the toilet. He’d orphaned the whole family with a target pistol. Red Mike had been the real pater of the house. Leopardo was a guy who liked to strangle people. He could never control the girls. He would have found feeble husbands for them—bricklayers, bums—if Mike hadn’t intervened.
    Holden wandered downstairs, said goodbye to Leopardo, and joined Edmundo on the grass. “I don’t want the girls kept prisoner in this house.”
    “We’re protecting them, Holden ... they could mutilate each other.”
    “That’s their business.”
    “And what if Carmen or Luiza comes after you?”
    “I’ll duck the hammer next time,” Holden muttered.
    “It’s a miracle you still have a head.”
    “Edmundo, I’m serious. Carmen goes free.”
    “I heard you. Carmen goes free.”
    “And how did Leopardo get out of the can?”
    “His sons are dead. I got him a weekend pass.”
    “This isn’t the weekend.”
    “I can’t help it if the Department of Corrections doesn’t keep better tabs.”
    “Edmundo, I want him returned in one piece.”
    “Why are you so considerate of your enemies?”
    “He’s not my enemy. I happened to kill all three of his sons.”
    And then Holden saw khaki checkers of cloth beyond the gate.
    There was a soldier, all right. Holden hadn’t spun him out of the turban on his head. The soldier had green eyes. A fugitive from St. Albans. He wore a battle scarf and his regimental bands. He had a tie and a clean shirt. The only hint of disorder was his tennis shoes. And Holden wondered if the army had adopted sneakers as part of its new battle dress.
    The soldier stood behind the gate and saluted him.
    Holden returned the salute and got into the Rolls Royce.

Fay

9
    H E WANTED TO HIDE out until his head healed. He had four apartments, under different names, where no one but Holden had a key. They were his mattress pads. It was smarter than getting on a plane, because airports could be watched, but a street in Chelsea was only a street in Chelsea. Away from the fur market Holden was as anonymous as any man. He had simpler clothes in his four apartments, a VCR, enough canned goods, bottled water, and video cassettes to keep him for a month. None of his rats knew where the apartments were. Goldie was familiar with one, Mrs. Howard with another, but he could step from apartment to apartment until all his baggage dropped and blurred whoever Holden was.
    Sometimes he’d go to one of the apartments and camp there for a week. He could lay the Beretta down in a drawer, retire the silk handkerchiefs, shuck off the tyranny of Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and dress like a scarecrow, put Dietrich on his VCR. But even that wasn’t much of an escape. His dad had loved Marlene, and he couldn’t watch Destry Rides Again without thinking of fathers and sons. He’d start to shiver after five or six days, his teeth would knock inside his skull, and he’d remember the twig, that curling body on his marriage bed, the weight of loving her, the lectures she’d give him on Cézanne while they watched the Academy Awards.
    “Holden, what the hell is Hollywood to you? I’m talking about a guy who structured