Maria's Girls (The Isaac Sidel Novels)

by Jerome Charyn

  “Then oust the fuck. Run for president of the local board.”

  “I can’t,” Isaac said. “They’ll call it nepotism. The police commissioner sticking his fingers in local school business.”

  “So I have to be your point man. With illegal searches and wiretaps. Isaac, I’m the one who could be arrested.”

  “How else can I grab Montalbán?” Isaac groaned. “And who would dare arrest you? You work for me.”

  “Isaac, I was shot in the heel last week.”

  “You’ll survive,” the PC said.

  “You don’t give a shit, do you? As long as you get Montalbán. But I’m not going to crucify any more little old men.”

  “Him? Rosen. He’s Montalbán’s creation. A greedy kike.”

  “Isaac, he’s a member of your own fucking tribe.”

  “Who says? I’m strictly a Sunday Yid. That’s when I light candles to my dead mama. I have no religion the rest of the week.”

  Caroll couldn’t wear down this Ahab who worshipped with a bug up his ass. Education. Isaac wouldn’t deal with the Inspector General’s office. He’d send Caroll into some fourth dimension so Caroll could get killed. And then that merciless man smiled in the dark. Caroll could see the tips of his teeth.

  “Are you short of money, kid? I hear you’ve been getting close to Fabiano Rice. He’s a bad boy. He belonged to Sal Rubino.”

  “But Sal’s asleep.” You killed him, Caroll muttered in his head. He caught some of your buckshot in New Orleans, Mr. Sidel.

  “Caroll, let me help you if you can’t make the vig.”

  “I don’t need help.”

  “It’s hard being married to the rich, aint it?”

  “I’m doing all right. The son of a fisherman, with a cardinal on his side. I can’t complain.”

  “But I could step on Fabiano’s feet.”

  “It’s not your business, Isaac. Fabiano’s my affair.”

  “Does Diana know?”

  “It’s not your business,” Caroll had to say again. And he was close to massacring Sidel, beating him around the ears so that Isaac’s blue face would explode with grief. “I’ll talk to little Rosen. I’ll get him to confess. I’ll map all of Montalbán’s strategies for you. I’ll find the pencils he stole. But stay out of my life.”

  He walked to Stanton Street, where little Rosen lived, an assistant principal who’d been married and divorced, and returned to the “Cradle,” as Isaac liked to call the Lower East Side. The little man was all alone. He had no more wives. He was sixty-two. Like Isaac, he had a daughter who shunned him. Caroll couldn’t understand how Rosen had gotten mixed up with Montalbán. Rosen’s milieu was Manhattan and Queens, not Vietnam. He didn’t snort coke. He wasn’t into little boys and girls. Why the fuck had he become a thief?

  He let Caroll into his apartment without a squawk. He boiled some tea in a pot, cut slices of strudel from a kosher bakery next to the Harry S. Truman Democratic Club, where Montalbán and his cronies held sway. Little Rosen cried into his tea. He wore a starched shirt. His necktie was royal blue.

  “Will I go to jail, Mr. Brent?”

  “Not if I can help it,” Caroll said. It almost seemed as if little Rosen was his stoolie. And then Caroll thought, Fuck. He is my stoolie.

  “What does Montalbán have on you?”

  “Nothing,” Rosen said.

  “Then how did he get you to steal?”

  “We didn’t see it as stealing,” Rosen said. “I was Carlos’ bookkeeper. We moved merchandise around … from school to school.”

  “Come on, I have you on tape. You were selling drugs.”

  “Not to kids,” Rosen said.

  Little Rosen didn’t realize that a lone detective had come to drink tea. He figured Caroll was part of some task force, a labyrinthian team called Isaac Sidel.

  “But you sold,” Caroll said.

  “Yes. So we could have a piano at one school, and …”

  “Pianos,” Caroll said. “It always comes down to pianos. You were the Good Samaritan of drug salesmen.”

  “No. I’m sure Carlos kept some money for himself. I did. I bought a suit at Barneys. With a fancy label. I paid in cash. But I never wore it, Mr. Brent.”

  “I’m not after your tail, Rosen. I want Montalbán. Start keeping notes. On all his moves. When he wipes his ass, I want to know about it.”

  Little Rosen started to cry again. “I believed in Carlos. He stole. I stole. But we helped the children. We gave them—”

  “You took money from your own fucking district. You swiped supplies.”

  “But nothing gets done without Carlos Montalbán. I filed reports. I have a desk full of correspondence on our paper shortages. Mr. Brent, I’ve been a teacher all my adult life. I married into the system forty years ago. And I suffered until Carlos came along. He’s our liquid. He’s also our glue. Yes, he steals. But we have our pencils now. The children have their books.”

  “And Montalbán is a millionaire. You’ll help me, won’t you, Rosen?”

  “Do I have a choice?” little Rosen asked, tugging at his royal blue tie. Caroll felt ill. He drank a glass of water from Rosens sink and said good-bye. He was shivering on the stairs. He liked little Rosen, who’d have to retire to a hole in the wall on Stanton Street, with his suit from Barneys and boxes of pencils made in Mexico. Caroll hardly knew Rosen, and he loved and hated him like any stoolie. Fucking Isaac Sidel.

  3

  Caroll had to wear his own blue tie. Diana was giving a party. There were forty guests. They looked like mice on a football field. Diana’s living room wrapped around Park Avenue. Caroll couldn’t relate to such a long room. He’d always be a guest here, no matter who owned the apartment. He was a WASP bridegroom in a city of Irishers, Italians, Latinos, blacks, White Russians, Chinese, Koreans, Jews …

  He bumped into Jim. The cardinal archbishop of New York had become his rabbi at One Police Plaza. Jim was drinking a glass of exquisite white wine. The Cassidys had their own fucking grapes and figs.

  “Laddie,” Jim said, “how’s life?” And then he looked into Caroll’s eyes. “Pay no mind to me at all. I’m talkative when I get into my cups. A bitter old man.”

  “What are you bitter about?”

  “Isaac Sidel.”

  Caroll had to hide his own bitter laugh. “I can’t discuss police business, Cardinal Jim.”

  “That’s the problem. It aint police business. Isaac’s declared himself emperor of Manhattan. He’d like to bring down the whole Board of Ed. I can’t allow that. I have sons and daughters in the public schools. I talked to Isaac about you. Did he mention that?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “I wasn’t doing you any favors. Mind, I love Diana. But I don’t see why you have to guard pianos for Isaac Sidel. He doesn’t have the City seal on his arse.”

  “Jim, did one of your monsignors track me to Harlem last Saturday night?”

  “I have my spies, same as Isaac … and you’ve been worrying your wife. She’s not so happy about these midnight treks. Sherwood Forest, that’s the place for Caroll Brent.”

  “Dee said something to you?”

  “No, no. I overheard a conversation. I’m a terrible eavesdropper. I have a donkey’s ears.”

  And the cardinal slipped away with his glass of wine into the depths of that living room. Caroll climbed up the stairs of the duplex and entered the vast employ of Diana’s kitchen. It could have been the galley on board some monumental ship. Diana had a pair of sous chefs, but she did most of the cooking. She’d gone to a cooking school in Paris.

  He approached her while she stirred a white chocolate pudding. She had short blond hair and the legs of a gallant pony, this billion-dollar wife of Caroll’s. Financiers shuddered when she came into a room, because she was Cassidy’s daughter. She had her own full-time accountant, who buried Caroll’s income within the book-long pages of Diana’s tax returns. He was like a baby inside the household. But he loved her, and Diana’s millions only brough
t him grief.

  She had purple eyes. Her nose was perfect. Her mouth was slightly crooked. Her neck was shaped like a bishop’s stick. It still excited him to stand near Dee, sniff her perfume in the midst of all her concentration on the pudding. But she could feel Caroll behind her, and she dismissed the sous chefs. “Darling,” she said. “We have guests. I have to be down in a minute. I can’t leave Cardinal Jim alone. He’ll take out his poker deck and make paupers of everybody. So give me one little squeeze.”

  He kissed her while the pudding bubbled, half his face inside her mouth, but he could sense that something was wrong. She’d been like a sleepwalker in bed during the last month. Some corner of her had turned remote. Caroll wondered if it was family business. He couldn’t seem to provide Papa Cassidy with an heir. Dee had gone to the best gynecologists. There was nothing wrong with her … or with Caroll’s sperm count. But they couldn’t make a child.

  He wondered about something else. All that pulling away from him. Did she have a lover? He was terrified of losing Dee, not the Park Avenue “mansion” and all the other trappings of their life. He had nightmares of Dee with another man.

  “Jim says you’ve been complaining about my schedule. You shouldn’t be talking to him about police affairs.”

  Her face widened. “Caroll, I didn’t.”

  “I could quit and become a bloodhound for some fancy lawyer.”

  “Caroll, I wouldn’t want you to quit. I married a policeman. But I wish you didn’t have to go sneaking up to Harlem in the middle of the night. I worry about you. You don’t have a home base … I loved to visit you in Central Park.”

  “It’s temporary,” he said. “I’m on a case.” It was a lie, of course. He was living on Isaac’s crazy moon, setting up wiretaps, dogging Maria Montalbán, persecuting little Rosen. He’d become the bloodhound of the local school boards.

  He went downstairs together with Dee. Heads turned. The company flowed in her direction, except for Stewart Hines, the junk-bond king, who handed Caroll a piece of blue paper. The blue paper was the signature of Caroll’s shylock. It was a cancellation ticket. Caroll was holding the vig, all the interest he owed on his debts to Fabiano Rice.

  “I can’t accept this, Mr. Hines.”

  “Caroll, I’m doing someone a favor, that’s all. I’m the middleman. I was asked to deliver this note to you.”

  “Come on, Mr. Hines. How innocent can you be? I’ve heard you kill half a dozen companies on Diana’s upstairs phone … moving bonds around. That’s your business. But you shouldn’t be carrying this paper. It concerns a particular shylock and me.”

  “Fabiano’s a friend of mine. I used to be his broker. And he said, ‘If you’re seeing Caroll, please tell him there’s no more vig.’ ”

  Caroll couldn’t punch Hines at Diana’s own party.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Hines, but I can’t accept this.” And he stuffed the blue ticket into Hines’ pants.

  He couldn’t seem to locate the shylock. Fabiano wasn’t at any of his usual haunts. Caroll wondered if the Rubinos were having a war party, and the shylock was sitting somewhere in the dark. But Fabiano made his living out on the street. He had to circulate with his own money. He had to collect the vig, or he wouldn’t have been much of a moneylender.

  And then, while Caroll was chasing his own tail, the shylock suddenly showed. It felt like some abracadabra, a loanshark’s trick. Caroll was sitting at his favorite lunch counter, a dive on Clinton Street. Fabiano appeared with his bodyguard. He looked like an art dealer. He was a small, elegant man. Caroll had gone to him in the first place because there was nothing vulgar about Fabiano Rice. And Fabiano wasn’t close to the Cassidys.

  “Ah, piccolino,” he said, “come sta?” as if the whole world were made of good little Italian boys.

  And Caroll didn’t answer with his usual “bene.” He wasn’t in the mood to play with this moneylender. “You’ve insulted me, maestro,” he said.

  Fabiano sat down away from the window, pinching the pleats of his pants. He ordered an egg sandwich in some melodic language that only countermen could understand.

  “Now tell me why you are so cross?”

  “You brought a third party into our agreement. That particular man happens to know my wife.”

  “But he’s discreet, piccolino. I wouldn’t harm you in family matters. And I have my honor to protect. It’s a third party who has to release you from your vig.”

  “Why do I deserve such kindness, maestro?”

  “Let’s say you have an admirer, a friend.”

  “And that admirer used his influence with Jerry DiAngelis to put the squeeze on my own shylock.”

  “Foolish boy, consider it a gift from God.”

  “A god named Isaac Sidel.”

  “I am not in the habit of bending to Hebrew police commissioners. But you must take the documento. That is the law.” And he returned to Caroll the crumpled piece of blue paper. “The debt remains, piccolino. But now it has no attachments.”

  The egg sandwich he ate could have been a delicacy prepared by Diana’s own hands. The shylock’s table manners were like a piece of music.

  “Good-bye, piccolino, good-bye.”

  But it depressed Caroll to have his vig erased like that, and not even know who his benefactor was. He couldn’t say why, but he thought of little Rosen. Perhaps it was because Rosen was in the neighborhood. Caroll often had premonitions of doom. That was cop country.

  He’d lost his appetite. And he was bound by some dumb mafioso law not to destroy Fabiano’s ticket. Caroll would have to wear it like a mark of shame.

  He rushed to Stanton Street. Little Rosen’s door wasn’t locked. Caroll had gone back into that fourth dimension. He didn’t have to reach very far. Little Rosen was in his bedroom hanging from a light fixture. He’d knotted different neckties to make his hangman’s tree. Caroll cut him down from the ceiling with a pocketknife. He heard the beginnings of a cough. He called an ambulance. The dead man wasn’t dead.

  4

  He sat with little Rosen on the way to the hospital. The medic didn’t want him in the ambulance. But Caroll had discovered Rosen, and Caroll was a cop.

  “Brent,” Rosen whispered, coming out of a bloodless sleep. “I’m not a squealer.”

  “I never said you were.”

  The medic glared at Caroll. “Are you collecting evidence, you son of a bitch? Is that why you came on the ride? To badger this man?”

  Caroll couldn’t even get angry. The medic had worked on little Rosen for twenty minutes, massaging him, forcing air into his lungs, connecting him up to a portable machine that served as Rosen’s diaphragm. Rosen defended Caroll while the diaphragm breathed in and out. “He’s my friend.”

  “You shut up,” the medic told him, and little Rosen returned to his bloodless sleep. He held Caroll’s fist, and Caroll felt like some betrayer, as if he’d fashioned that cord of neckties. Isaac’s hangman.

  The ambulance arrived at Beekman Downtown Hospital on Gold Street. Little Rosen was wheeled through the emergency doors, and Caroll was only one more meddler. He waited outside. He must have been napping on his feet. Suddenly the whole school board materialized, every fucking officer of One B. They stood like dream people—silent, scornful—and Caroll thought of a play he’d seen with Diana at Circle In The Square. Six or seven characters standing like ghosts on the stage, looking for the guy who created them.

  The officers wouldn’t take their eyes off him. They weren’t alone. Maria Montalbán had come to Beekman Downtown. Montalbán wasn’t a ghost. He had a little gold star in his left ear. His heels were very high.

  “Cabrón,” he said. “Isaac’s little fairy. You think I don’t know how you spy on us? You come to our board meetings and pretend you’re a concerned parent. You invent names for children you never had. You call yourself ‘Mr. Margolis.’ You plant microphones in our office. I could tell the chancellor. But I don’t. Mr. Policeman, what’s your name?’

  “Steven Margo
lis,” Caroll said. He had an alias for every school board in Manhattan.

  “Well, Mr. Margolis, fuck yourself. I am Maria Montalbán, superintendent of District One B. You put my best man into the hospital.”

  “I didn’t put him there. I found him trying to hang himself.”

  “Because you wanted to make him a stoolie, Mr. Margolis, alias Detective Brent. And he wouldn’t snitch. Did you tell him we’d all go to jail? Here I am. Arrest me. Go on. I steal supplies. I do drugs. Yes or no?”

  “Yeah, you steal, Montalbán.”

  “And you’re Cassidy’s son-in-law. Who’s the bigger thief, me or him?”

  “But he doesn’t take from children.”

  “Mr. Policeman, you have my school board in front of you. They appointed me. Not the chancellor. Ask them what I steal.”

  Caroll searched that line of faces. He couldn’t catch a single bump of sympathy. He decided to leave.

  Maria Montalbán shouted at him.

  “Keep away from Rosen.”

  He was sick of playing a submarine. He surfaced at One Police Plaza. Isaac’s angel. He had no trouble getting to the commissioners’ floor. The First Dep, Carlton Montgomery III, aka Sweets, who’d been the acting commissioner while Isaac was in the can, stopped to say hello. Sweets was a black giant, six foot six. He didn’t have a bug in his ass. He would have made a better PC.

  “How goes it, Caroll? Isaac have you hopping around?”

  “Sort of,” Caroll said.

  “Folks are beginning to miss you at Sherwood Forest.”

  The First Dep didn’t approve of submariners, but he wouldn’t go against Sidel.

  “Hey, Caroll, remember me to your wife.”

  Diana got along with the giant. All the Cassidys did. But Cardinal Jim didn’t want a black PC. Jim was patron saint of the Police Department, and he could only maneuver in an Irish universe. He didn’t mind a sheenie or two. Sidel was as good as an Irishman. The PC had a brogue. And he had a daughter who was half Irish. Caroll was the lone WASP of One PP. But his wife was a mick, even if she was worth half a billion dollars.