Free Marilyn the Wild by Jerome Charyn Page B

hospital clerks, so he walked behind Isaac, with long, pinched lines developing in the suede. The five of them burrowed into the main ward, past nurses, orderlies, and patients in rumpled gowns. Isaac was looking for a boy in traction, with his arms and legs in the air. The search became futile. They caught an old man pissing behind a screen. The man threw a pill bottle at Isaac; it struck Newgate over the eye. Isaac closed the screen.
    Wadsworth led him to a boy with plaster mittens on his hands and feet; none of the mittens extended beyond the ankle or wrist. The boy was Chinese.
    Coen didn’t have to stare too hard; it was the boy who jumped on his chest at the Jewish youth center. He couldn’t decide what to tell Isaac. The Chief didn’t need prods from Coen. He examined the identification card attached to the bed: Stanley Chin didn’t have an address; his age was listed as sixteen and a half. The evenness of the mittens disturbed Isaac. He couldn’t be sure this was Amerigo’s work. The landlord’s hired goons wouldn’t have restricted themselves to cracking fingers and toes. They didn’t have that much finesse. The boy should have been bent at the elbows, or suffered a broken knee.
    Isaac came up to the bed. His voice wasn’t harsh. “Stanley Chin, do you know me?”
    The boy said nothing; he watched Coen and the albino in blue.
    The Chief brushed against the bed’s high, criblike gate. “I’m Isaac Sidel.”
    The boy pushed air through his nose and wiggled his teeth against his bottom lip. Did I collar the boy’s father, Isaac wondered, did I bite his family in some horrible way? He couldn’t remember capturing any Chinamen in the last five or ten years.
    â€œWhy’s Amerigo Genussa after you?” Newgate screamed at the boy. Isaac told him to get back. He promised to kick Newgate past the Rockaways if he interfered again.
    â€œStanley, tell me where your school is? Brooklyn? Queens? The Bronx?”
    Wadsworth whispered to Isaac. “The kid goes to Seward Park. My uncle Quentin got that much out of him.” Then he moved behind Coen. Wadsworth was getting jumpy in the hospital. A white glare came off the walls. He couldn’t function without the buzzing of a movie screen. He was addicted to technicolor and dust on his face. He’d have to beg Isaac to ship him home pretty soon.
    Isaac sensed the slithering motion under the suede. But he couldn’t free Wadsworth until he pressed the Chinese boy.
    â€œStanley, did you know I went to Seward Park? I graduated in 1946. No lie. I spoke at the school a few months ago. Do you remember that?”
    The boy wouldn’t respond to Isaac; he rubbed the mittens on his feet while scrutinizing Wadsworth’s pink eyes and colorless hair. The albino had bewitched him. Brodsky nudged Isaac on the wrist. “Chief, you’ll never make this kid trading school stories. Ask me to step on his fingers, or let Manfred kiss him in the mouth.”
    Isaac didn’t have the chance to scold Brodsky. The head nurse, an enormous black woman with a pound of starch in her midriff and her sleeves, descended upon all five of them. “What the hell do you mean busting in here without my permission?”
    Brodsky answered her. “Lady, this is Chief Sidel of the First Deputy’s office. He goes where he wants.”
    â€œNot in this hospital, fat man.” She turned on Wadsworth. “Who the hell are you?”
    The starch bristled in Wadsworth’s eye, confounding him. He squeezed between Brodsky and the FBI man. Newgate fished for some identification. “Madam, I’m with the FBI.”
    â€œJesus God,” she said. “How did you lunatics get inside the door?”
    Newgate’s Cherokee blood bleached his nose red. “Nurse, you can check me out. I’m Amos Newgate of the Manhattan bureau.”
    â€œSure,” the woman said. “And I’m Mother