Maria's Girls (The Isaac Sidel Novels)

by Jerome Charyn

  Seeing him in a hospital gown, with a shaved skull, Sweets felt some remorse: he would have done anything for the outlaw, but he wouldn’t ruin the Department.

  “How are you, boss?”

  “I’m not your boss,” Isaac said. “I’m just a man in a long shirt. I have no status here.”

  “But you have a family. How come I get to see you first?”

  “Because I don’t have time for family. Talk to me, Sweets. What did the Crime Scene boys come up with?”

  “Very little. Whoever hit you, Isaac, was a cool customer. He cleaned up after him. He swept the place, picked up all the shells.”

  “But he wasn’t a magician, Sweets. He couldn’t have walked around with a flashlight on his head and gathered all the spent bullets, every fucking fragment.”

  Isaac was pissed off. He didn’t have much to do with the Crime Scene Unit. CSU occupied an office building on Fordham Road and Webster Avenue, near the bombed-out barrios of the Bronx. No one else wanted to rent the space. The lads from Crime Scene covered all five boroughs. They would arrive in their white gloves and white coats like miraculous bloodhounds. Isaac could imagine how his own crime scene must have gone. There would have been a furor at One PP. “The Commish is down, the Commish is down.” And the bloodhounds would have borrowed powerful lights from Emergency Service and turned that crime scene into a movie set.

  “Sweets, can’t our lads even get a make on the gun?”

  “I’d say you were stopped with a nine-millimeter cannon. That’s only an educated guess. The impact was terrific. Crime Scene says you fell like a moose. You left little craters in the ground. You had five holes in you, Isaac. The bullets went in and out like a whistle. You shouldn’t be alive.”

  “Our people didn’t search hard enough,” Isaac said. “There had to be something in the grass.”

  “Come on, Isaac. You can’t blame CSU. The fragments they found had no fucking value. Ballistics confirmed that. Here, have a look.”

  Sweets handed Isaac a copper slug that resembled a slightly thickened penny. “The bullet struck a wall, and that’s what’s left. There are no grooves, Isaac. How’s Ballistics supposed to read a sweetheart like this?”

  Isaac clutched the penny. “Can I keep it?”

  “Why not? … the bullets had a copper jacket. That’s all we know.”

  “You think I could have been glocked?”

  “Yes,” Sweets said.

  “With my own gun?”

  “No. Your gun was clean. It hadn’t been touched.”

  The Glock was a 9 mm semiautomatic. The Austrians had introduced it. Most of it was made of plastic. The Glock wouldn’t rust. It looked like a space gun out of Star Wars. Skyjackers were fond of the Glock, because they could smuggle most of it through a metal detector. Drug lords liked to use it. The Glock had incredible firepower for such a light gun. It had been given to elite squads at the NYPD. And sometimes, during a firefight, a cop might get glocked with his own gun.

  Both Isaac and the First Dep had Glocks, which were housed in special holsters. They would go to the shooting range three times a year to fire their Glocks.

  “Now will you tell me what happened to you, Isaac? How come your new favorite, Caroll Brent, finds you under the Williamsburg Bridge?”

  “I have no favorites,” Isaac said. “Caroll’s a good detective.”

  “So good, you take him off the chart. He’s our phantom. He’s the one who could have glocked you.”

  “No, no. Not Caroll. Where’d you put him?”

  “Back in Sherwood Forest, where he belongs.”

  Isaac groaned. “He’s on special assignment.”

  “Not anymore. Isaac, I could bust him right now. He’s been borrowing from a shylock. The shylock belongs to the Rubinos. Fabiano Rice.”

  “He’s harmless.”

  “So harmless he had one of his clients kicked to death a year ago.”

  “Fabiano laughed his way out of court.”

  “I don’t care. No more witch hunts, Isaac. You want to build a case against Maria Montalbán, you build it through the Department.”

  “Come on, Sweets. Montalbán’s a protected man. He has the Democratic machine behind him. He goes to banquets with the district attorney. Judges like to kiss his ass. He’s stealing from kids.”

  “Then talk to Alejo Tómas and his inspector general.”

  “Alejo and Maria Montalbán are cousins, for Christ’s sake.”

  “That’s tough, Isaac. Now tell me what happened.”

  “I was waiting for Caroll … I don’t remember the rest. I heard a noise. And then I was on my ass. I thought a hurricane had come to Manhattan. My ears wouldn’t stop ringing.”

  “Any idea who the hitter was?”

  “One of Sal Rubino’s soldiers.”

  “Sal can’t have much of a crew,” Sweets said.

  “Of course not. I killed him.”

  “Jesus Christ, do you have to tell me that? I’m the Acting Commish.”

  “Everybody knows I iced Sal. Why pretend? But it seems I didn’t ice him enough. Rubino’s alive. Caroll talked to him. Rubino offered him money to whack me out.”

  “Then it could have been Caroll … with the Glock.”

  “Can’t you listen? Caroll’s on my side. And he’s not a gun buff. He never used a Glock.”

  “He could learn. Sal might be a terrific teacher.”

  “Sal’s in a wheelchair. He’s a vegetable … like me. Don’t you get it, Sweets? He only wanted me half dead, so I could suffer and be another Sal.”

  “He’s not that much of a poet,” Sweets said.

  “Yeah, he’s a regular Euripides.”

  “So are you. Isaac, Isaac, it’s deserted under the bridge. If you knew Sal was alive, why did you pick such a dumb spot?”

  “For sentimental reasons,” Isaac said. “It’s the only part of Sheriff Street that still exists. The rest has been lost inside housing projects.”

  “What’s so special about Sheriff Street?”

  “It was my favorite block. I used to go there when I was a boy. It was dark because of the bridge. I had my own cave, like Ali Baba.”

  “Sheriff Street,” Sweets said. And he felt impulsive. He swooped over Isaac and kissed him on the forehead, because he couldn’t imagine a world without Sidel. Sweets could run the Department, but he needed that crazy man with his crazy desires. He left Isaac in peace and walked out of the hospital. Who else but Sidel would have used his boyhood hideout as a meeting hall?

  Reporters descended upon Sweets.

  “How is he, sir? Does he have all his faculties?”

  “He’s fine.”

  “Can he speak sentences, or does he have to signal with his hands?”

  “He does both,” Sweets said. “Now stop haunting this hospital.”

  “Sir, sir, who shot Isaac?”

  “No comment.”

  “Do you have a possible perpetrator?”

  “We have several. Starting with Santa Claus … I’m not holding a press conference here, while you wait for Isaac to die.”

  “Sir, sir, what did you talk about with Sidel?”

  And Sweets had to smile. “About the Bomber, who else?”

  “What did Isaac say?”

  “Harry on the handle, one two three.”

  Isaac was dreaming of center field. He’d had only one hero. Awkward Harry. He liked to play his little game of “Faust.” Isaac would meet with the Devil, who looked a little like Sal. “Just give me one summer. Nineteen forty-three. Center field at the Polo Grounds. I want to be Harry. You can have my soul … and my police career.”

  “Including your Glock?” the Devil told him.

  “My badge and my Glock.”

  The Devil played with Isaac’s gun. “How many bullets does it hold?”

  “Fourteen in the clip and one in the chamber.”

  “Sidel, are you trying to stiff me with some toy?”

  You could always pull the trigger, Isaac
started to say, but before he could finish he was in center field, wearing the Giants’ whites. He wanted to cry. But a fucking nurse had spoiled it for him. She’d come into his room with a tray … and Isaac lost the whole sensation of center field.

  “Nursey, I don’t want my chicken broth. Can you please knock next time? And where’s my lime jello?”

  “Up your ass,” the nurse said, and Isaac took a closer look under her cap. He should have recognized her figure, the fall of her hands. But he’d grown a little stupid in bed.

  “Margaret, how the hell did you get in here? The security’s supposed to be tight as a tit.”

  “I sapped a nurse and borrowed her uniform. Don’t worry. She’ll recover. She’s sitting in a closet somewhere.”

  “Well, take off that hat. You look like my Aunt Bea. She was a mother superior at a Hebrew convent.”

  “I never heard of a Hebrew convent, Isaac.”

  “This is America. You can find anything you want.”

  “Aren’t you going to say hello?”

  She removed the cap. Her hair was dark this week. She’d become a brunette for the FBI. She was on the far side of fifty, like the Commish. But her eyes were a constant almond color. He’d been in love with Margaret Tolstoy forty years. She was a Roumanian refugee, a dirt-poor princess who’d invaded Isaac’s junior-high-school class during the war, when searchlights cluttered the Manhattan sky and Isaac was a little pest who lived at the Polo Grounds.

  “I tried to get in touch. I kept calling the Justice Department, but Justice wouldn’t return my calls. I couldn’t tell if you were in Kansas or Ohio, or what gang you were sleeping with … Margaret, Sal is alive.”

  “Tell me about it. He’s been sending out his soldiers, and I’ve been punishing them.”

  “But you can’t keep hopping from gang to gang. Sal has his own grapevine. He’ll get to you, like he did in New Orleans. And I might not be able to deliver.”

  “You’ll manage.”

  “Margaret, I can’t even go to the toilet by myself. I live on lime jello and castor oil. I have metal pins in my shoulder. I wake up in the middle of the night and I don’t know who I am.”

  “That’s a good sign,” Margaret said. “It means you’ll recover.”

  “Margaret, get out of circulation. Disappear.”

  “And what should I do about my Isaac?”

  “We’ll meet someplace in Alaska … or Singapore.”

  “You’ll die of malnutrition. You’re just a brat from the Lower East Side.”

  “And what are you?”

  “A homicidal lady. I have no home, Isaac.”

  “Tell LeComte to hire a new gangbuster.”

  Frederic LeComte was cultural commissar at Justice. He’d appointed Isaac as the first Alexander Hamilton Fellow. Isaac had gone around the country talking to police chiefs. But his tour was over. Isaac had embarrassed LeComte. He’d hid behind his travels to follow Margaret to New Orleans and shoot Sal in an old sausage factory. Margaret had lived with Sal and spied on him, she’d lived with LeComte for a week, but she’d never lived with Isaac. Sick as he was, the big bear wouldn’t have let her breathe.

  “LeComte wants me to retire so I can become his number-one mistress. I’d rather be out in the field.”

  “You could stay with me,” Isaac said, with all the sadness of a police commissioner.

  “Should I ask the hospital to wheel another bed into your room?”

  “Not now … after I heal.”

  “Ah, you mean your little palace on Rivington Street, with that cosy tub in the kitchen. I’d get antsy, Isaac.”

  “I could move … to Sutton Place.”

  “I’d start flirting with all the millionaires. You wouldn’t like it.”

  “But I can’t look after you when you’re in Milwaukee, romancing some hood on LeComte’s hit list. Justice cut off my stipend. And who knows when I can travel?”

  She pulled gently, gently on his ears, because she didn’t want to create some new trauma for Isaac Sidel. “I’ll be all right. I’m always careful.”

  “You weren’t so careful in New Orleans,” Isaac said, and he started to blubber. “Rubino would have bumped you if I’d been five minutes late.”

  “That’s because he was jealous. He couldn’t bear it that I liked you better than him.”

  “I didn’t know you liked Sal. I thought he was only a trick.”

  “I lived with him, didn’t I? It was almost like a marriage.”

  “You’d live with him, but not with me.”

  “Come on, Isaac, you’d ask me to wear an apron and you’d start feeding me fertility pills. I can’t be a mama. I’m fifty-three.”

  There was a sound at the door, and Margaret poked a gun out of her skirt. It was a plastic 9 mm piece.

  “Since when are you carrying a Glock?” Isaac asked. “I didn’t know it was a Justice Department gun.”

  “It isn’t,” she said. “Isaac, I’d better blow. Someone might have found that nurse. And I can’t afford to lose my cover. LeComte will get mad. He’ll think I’ve been playing hardball with the Hamilton Fellow.”

  “Where can I find you?”

  “I’m in the phonebook, Isaac. Just look up the Roumanian Relief Society.”

  “It doesn’t exist.”

  “It will. In a little while.”

  And she went out the door with Isaac’s jello.

  9

  The bear was sleeping twelve hours a day. After he woke he was given a halter and lowered into a little pool. The halter held him tight, and Sidel swam without moving. His legs wouldn’t kick. His arms began to tire after a hundred strokes. He would rather have swung a bat. But the nurses wouldn’t let him play Harry on the handle. He had to swim in his corset.

  Now he understood the psychology of an invalid. He lived from meal to meal. Lime jello was his greatest priority. He had to flatter the dietician, or the green jello would disappear. He didn’t like lemon or cherry or peach. And he’d bay like a wounded animal if the nurses switched colors on him. He despised his own pettiness. But he couldn’t help himself. It was lime, and lime alone, that could soothe his tongue and satisfy the Commish.

  His daughter called from Seattle.

  “Daddy, I could come … whenever you like. The hospital said you weren’t supposed to have any visitors.”

  She’d arrived in New York hours after the big bear had been shot, when the bear was dreaming of old Harry. She’d stayed for a month, until he opened his eyes. Isaac couldn’t remember now. He must have mistaken her for a nurse. She could chill his blood. And perhaps he didn’t want to wake out of his sleep to the image of Marilyn the Wild. He hadn’t been much of a daddy. He was jealous of all her old boyfriends, including Manfred Coen. Marilyn thought her daddy had plotted to kill Blue Eyes. It wasn’t so. He’d tossed Coen at the Guzmanns. That was his job. But he didn’t mean for Manfred to die. The Guzmanns had given him his worm. The worm mourned Manfred as much as Marilyn did. But whoever had shot Isaac must have also shot the worm. Isaac had an instinct about his guts. The worm wasn’t there.

  “Ah,” he said. “Marilyn, I have work to do. I have to catch the phantom who clipped me … he killed my worm.”

  “Daddy, are you delirious?”

  “No. I’m grieving for the worm … maybe you could come next month.”

  “Who knows where you’ll be? You have a habit of disappearing on people.”

  “You can always catch me at the office.”

  “Wanna bet?”

  She was crying. The big bear could tell. His baby was crying. He felt like shit. They could never be civil to one another. All their encounters were a kind of incest. He couldn’t deal with Marilyn right now. One day he’d die of his daughter. He knew that. The longing was too great.

  “I’ll see you next month,” he said. “I promise. The minute I get out of this joint.”

  He wanted to tell Marilyn that he loved her, but he couldn’t. He would have called her baby, like he did w
hen she was young enough to sit on his lap. But he had to be careful with the daughter.

  “Good-bye, sweetheart,” he said.

  And when he hung up the phone his shoulders started to heave. He was bawling like that when the cardinal came in unannounced. Jim was dressed like a simple priest. He didn’t wear the colors of his station … or his pectoral cross.

  “Jesus, should I call the surgeon?”

  “I don’t need a surgeon,” Isaac said. “I was thinking of my girl.”

  “Madame Tolstoya?”

  “No. Not Madame Tolstoya. Who let you in?”

  “It’s hard to keep out a cardinal. I’d cause a big stink.”

  “Always conniving, aint you, Jim? You ought to be glad. The Delancey Street Giants are in last place without me. And you’re at the top of the division.”

  “Didn’t realize you were following our league, Isaac. I’m flattered.”

  “You shouldn’t be. You’re a scoundrel. You raid all the schools. You steal the best players … and you leave me with shit.”

  “Shhh, I’m a cardinal … who’s coaching your lads these days?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Well then, I have a bit of news. The Bomber agreed to take the position … until you return to the fold.”

  “You talked to Harry?”

  “Indeed I did.”

  “But he hates me. He thinks I tried to sabotage the Christy Mathewsons.”

  “He has a forgiving nature. Besides, he wouldn’t leave the Delancey Giants in the lurch. I cleared it with the PAL commissioners. Harry having been a professional and all. But the commissioners were delighted to have him. So you see, Isaac, I do look after your lads.”

  “As long as they’re in last place.”

  “Well, I’m not the village idiot. Are you comfortable, love? I could harangue the nurses. I could make the hospital shit a couple of bricks.”