Free Marilyn the Wild by Jerome Charyn

put the idea into their heads. Not for your sake. It’s for mama. You’re her special boy. I didn’t want her to wake up in a stinking hospital without you around. Now tell me who the bastard is, the fuck who’s got my girl? Name him for me.”
    â€œIsaac, go to hell.”
    Isaac could have throttled Leo without wrinkling his career. With the First Dep behind him, the Chief had the right to bluster with impunity. Leo’s devotion to Marilyn gnawed at him. The Chief was a little jealous. Forty years I fight his battles, Isaac said to himself, and he picks Marilyn over me. Isaac’s love for his brother was mingled with a kind of criminality; fondness could turn to bile in a matter of seconds. The Sidels were a bitter crew.
    â€œLeo, you’re taking advantage of me. There are tiny pricks and cunts out there who are looking to murder us. They got to Sophie. It won’t happen again. But don’t expect me to pamper you. I want your ass out of this jail. I’ll stroke the Commissioner of Corrections if I have to. I’ll fix it with your wife. Mama shouldn’t have to be in a room with strangers. You stay with her until I find those freaks. Leo, I give you three days. Then I’m going to tear the jail apart”
    Isaac moved across the room with hops of his broad neck. The guards peeked in. They sidled up to Leo, surrounding him with sheepish looks. “Pinochle, Leo? We have four hands today. We’re ready to lose.”
    Leo still had the shivers, but he wouldn’t disappoint the guards. “Gentlemen, I’ll deal first.” The guards searched for folding chairs. Leo tucked in the corners of the deck. He was hoping pinochle would save these men. Melding flushes and marriages might ease down their tenor of the Chief.
    The guards shivered as fast as Leo. They fumbled with the deck, throwing cards away. They couldn’t auction off their marriages, or bid for trumps. Isaac had murdered their afternoon.

7.

    T HE FBI man wouldn’t leave Isaac alone. He had his own pillow at Headquarters, and he carried it in and out of Isaac’s office. Newgate adored the Chief. Jumping from Bethesda, Maryland, into a universe of Jews, Irishmen, and black detectives, he wanted Isaac to understand that he wasn’t an ordinary Episcopalian. He claimed to be part Cherokee. Isaac’s men sniggered at this bit of exoticism; the threat of Indian blood couldn’t bring Newgate closer to them. He was made of straw, a Maryland idiot who stole words out of Isaac’s mouth. He couldn’t impress them with his talk of “burying” Amerigo Genussa and “sinking” Mulberry Street. Italians might be out of fashion in a year, and the FBI would be climbing trees for black militants and Puerto Rican nationalists.
    Newgate squirmed on his pillow after a white nigger arrived in Isaac’s office, a white nigger in a blue suede suit. He had never come across such a weird creature in his life with the FBI. It was Wadsworth, the albino from Forty-second Street, hiding his face from the sun in Isaac’s windows. Only Isaac could comprehend Wadsworth’s sacrifice: the albino wouldn’t have exposed himself to the ruinous effects of daylight unless he had something important to deliver.
    Barney Rosenblatt interrupted him. The Chief of Detectives blundered into Isaac’s rooms, his suspenders forking with irritation. He wouldn’t address a nigger bundled in blue suede. So he pretended Wadsworth was invisible, and he carped at Isaac. “Are you crazy? You bring a clown to Headquarters? Couldn’t you negotiate with him someplace else? You’ll give the PC a shit fit. Gloms like that leave an odor. Isaac, he’ll scare the pants off my men.”
    â€œEat it, Cowboy,” Wadsworth said, picking dust off his sleeve.
    Barney lunged at Wadsworth without taking his eyes away from Isaac.
    â€œOut,” Isaac said. “This man’s