Paradise Man Read Free

say.”
    “You’ve been jabbering with her for five minutes. She had to tell you something.”
    “She did. She told me about her dolls and her favorite dish of ice cream.”
    “Thanks,” Holden said. “You solved the riddle. What the hell was she doing in Queens?”
    “She doesn’t remember. She was sleeping under a table and you woke her up.”
    “Women,” Holden muttered. “They’re all alike. Walk around with mysteries in their brains. Will you ask her who her dad is?”
    Goldie smiled. “You’re her dad, she says.”
    “I give up. She’s an elf. Her only past is dolls and ice cream.”
    “It’s a blessing. You went out on a kill and inherited a daughter.”
    “Is that smart?” Holden asked. “Did you have to say kill?”
    “Holden, she’s not a dummy. She talks like an adult.”
    “Not to me,” Holden said.
    “You’re a little rough with her. That’s the problem.”
    Holden cracked his teeth. It was a habit he picked up from his dad. “Rough? I was a lamb.”
    “You didn’t buy her a lollipop or ask about her dolls.”
    “Goldie, I had other things on my mind ... like what happens when the cops discover she’s missing. Whatever she told you, the little bitch has a family somewhere.”
    “Shame on you,” Goldie said. “The girl decides you’re her dad, and right away you call her a bitch ... take off your clothes.”
    “What?”
    “How can I dress you with your clothes on. Take them off.”
    “In front of the girl?”
    “Holden, she must have seen men in their underpants. I guarantee you. She’s quite mature.”
    Holden got undressed and stood around in his socks and shorts, like a doll in the window. Goldie gave him a silk shirt. The silk sent shivers along his spine. The tailor himself knotted Holden’s tie. Then he took a blue Beretta out of a bag and attached the gun to Holden with its leather cup. And he dressed Holden in a dark wool suit that was made to wear with this gun. Holden saw himself in the mirror. The suit hugged his skeleton like some armor of skin out of the Middle Ages, and there wasn’t the hint of a holster under Goldie’s wool.
    Goldie had draped him like Douglas Fairbanks Jr., the best-dressed man in the world. London elite, Goldie called it. Wine-colored shoes and a display handkerchief that cost twice as much as a hat. Holden couldn’t walk in off the street and visit Doug Jr.’s tailors. He had to depend on Goldie to steal the tailors’ styles. Goldie had a carton of patterns from all the best shops. The classiest tailors didn’t have a public address. Would lords and earls wander into the marketplace with wild, anonymous men? The quality of a tailor was determined by who he wouldn’t dress.
    “Goldie, what about the kid?”
    “Offer her to Mrs. Howard.”
    “I don’t get it. She’s not a nursemaid.”
    “That’s the point. Nobody will know where to look.”
    Mrs. Howard was a widow who’d once worked in the shop. She’d been a tailor up in Harlem with some tough gang, but she fled St. Nicholas Avenue years ago to stick pins in trouser cuffs for Goldie. She’d dress Holden when Goldie was ill. She’d had as good a hand as Goldie himself but she suffered from arthritis and could no longer grab a needle or a pin. Holden hid his file cards with Mrs. Howard, and the record books of the spies he carried. Holden had to keep spies, or he couldn’t have lasted. He’d almost been killed twice on a poisoned contract. His rats had saved him. And she ran them for Holden on her telephone line. She’d become Holden’s answering service. He hadn’t bought her loyalty. He loved her. She’d lived with his dad for a while. She was the only one of his father’s women he’d ever liked.
    He walked out of Goldie’s with the Marielita, her lollipop, and his quarter million and took a cab to Mrs. Howard, who kept a flat on Oliver Street across from the old mariner’s church. She had her own back yard, with pigeon coops and a tiny barn for neighborhood