“I could have given you some Thai stick.”
“It’s not the same thing,” Caroll said.
“If I let you out of the box, will you go home?”
“I don’t have a home. I get in the way of all the servants. I have to tiptoe around them like a fucking guest. Did you ever hear of a mansion inside an apartment house? You slept in one of the rooms, for Christ’s sake.”
“Yeah, I almost got lost.”
“I took a room at Lincoln Tower.”
“You’re the one who’s hallucinating.”
“No. I like the place.”
It was a flophouse on Central Park North. It had its own secret address, because most native New Yorkers never even knew there was a Central Park North. Barbarossa and Caroll had busted a child-pornography and prostitution ring at the hotel. But all Caroll could think about was the view from the window, or he might have murdered the child molesters. He was just above the trees, and the Park floated under him like a fabulous moving curtain. Barbarossa wanted to off the three molesters, who had their own studio and shop at Lincoln Tower behind a fake fire door. But there was a child in the room, a girl of twelve or so, who was sitting naked on a couch with a smile that could chill a man.
“The girl, the little girl,” Caroll had whispered to Barbarossa.
“Partner, she won’t have much of a memory for the motherfuckers. And if we walk right out, she’ll never recognize us. Who will know, partner, who will know? … I have a terrible itch.”
Caroll covered up the little girl with a blanket and arrested the three men. But the D.A.’s office wouldn’t indict. “It’s an illegal search and seizure,” said Corcoran, the young assistant D.A.
“Jesus,” Barbarossa said. “They were standing with their cocks out and photographing that little girl.”
“You’d still have to show probable cause. Was the door open?”
“No.”
“Did the girl scream?”
“No.”
“They’ll laugh us out of court … you should have gone to your superiors and gotten a warrant. What were you doing in that hotel?”
“We had a hunch.”
Barbarossa couldn’t say that he’d gone to the hotel to tease a little Thai stick out of a dealer, that he was smoking the Thai with Caroll, and had wandered through the fire door.
“I told you, partner. We should have offed them,” Barbarossa had said once Corcoran was gone. But Caroll kept returning to the hotel. He’d “borrow” a room for a couple of hours. The manager wouldn’t let him pay. He’d sit and watch that crazy curtain of leaves. And now he’d gone back as a permanent, paying guest.
Barbarossa brought him to Lincoln Tower in his own car.
“Partner, go home to the wife. Talk to her. Slap her around and cuddle her. You’ll feel better.”
“I can’t,” Caroll said. And he went inside the Lincoln’s battered front door.
Part Four
15
The City had begun using Caroll’s hotel as a holding pen for families without a roof. It was filled with the homeless. A deputy commissioner from the Department of Human Resources arrived at the hotel with an enormous ledger and knocked on everybody’s door, including Caroll’s.
“What are you doing here?” the deputy asked. “You’re not a family. I’ll have to evict you.”
Caroll took the ledger out of this deputy’s hands. “I’m a paying guest.”
“That’s impossible. We’ve taken over this hotel.”
“I’m a paying guest.”
The deputy showed Caroll his badge. “I’ve requisitioned every room.”
“I got here before the City did. Now get the hell out of my face.”
And Caroll kept his room. The City had to edge around him. But he began to feel distressed. He had his view of the trees, he had his hot plate. He could swim in his own sea of space, while the other lodgers lived four and five to a room. He promised himself that he’d go back to the mansion, but he couldn’t. He had to talk to Dee. He couldn’t. He kept recalling those rings. It didn’t matter if she’d slept with Montalbán or not. It was still a romance. She’d been thinking of Maria all the while she was in bed with Caroll. Maria had been on her mind. And Caroll couldn’t even tell if he was sane anymore. He’d met Sal Rubino in the Park. He’d followed Dee to Maria’s café. He’d started to drink. He’d planned in his head to murder Maria. But he was only a cop at Sherwood Forest, diminished by jealousy and drink. He didn’t have the cunning and frozen blood of an assassin. He drank his way uptown to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And when he did confront Dee with her dancing partner, he could hardly look into her eyes. All he could do was dance with Maria and punch him into the ground. He’d lost his shield and had to wait for Martin Malik. He had five hundred dollars in the bank. And then he’d have to borrow against his Gold Card. He’d be solvent for a couple of months, until all his credit shut down … and he’d go looking for another shylock.
But he had those magnificent trees from his window, a curtain across the Park that soothed him in this sad hotel. Old men lost their memories in the hall. Caroll had to return them to whatever room they were in. He climbed over garbage and human shit, wondering if Malik’s court could be worse than this. But he didn’t abandon the hotel. He broke up fights between the different lodgers. He was both a sheriff and a scribe, helping the sick and the blind prepare dossiers that would bring them food stamps. He lived on soup and soda crackers … and bottles of Four Roses. He discovered a young lady in the hall. She wore high heels and a floppy hat that hid half her face. She wasn’t soliciting any of the lodgers. She didn’t look much like a prostitute. She had to be a model, with a swipe of lipstick and the one delicately shaded eye that Caroll could see. He recognized her now. She was the pornographers’ model. But he’d been mistaken. She wasn’t such a little girl.
“I’m Delia,” she said, shaking his hand when Caroll wouldn’t get out of her way.
“Delia, what are you doing here?”
“Looking for locations.”
“You some kind of a scout?”
“Yes. I’m in the picture business. Movie pictures.”
She was fifteen, sixteen at the most, under her floppy hat. And Caroll didn’t play the cop. He let her pass. And he began to feel a curious thrill, as if his own future were tied to this girl. He and Barbarossa hadn’t closed the pornography shop at Lincoln Tower. It was business as usual behind the fire door. There must have been other studios and shops. And he began to realize that Lincoln Tower was a pornography mill. The Department of Human Resources was only an elaborate cover. Caroll didn’t pounce. He followed Delia, always at a distance. She had liquid legs. She could navigate a stairway like nobody’s business. Who the hell had taught her to glide like that?
But his persistence with Delia began to pay. He caught her talking to a man in front of the hotel. The guy had gotten out of a Cadillac. Short, with elegant sleeves. It was Caroll’s shylock, Fabiano Rice.
Caroll almost started to laugh. He’d found a little symmetry in his own life. The world had its very own reason. Delia was attached to Fabiano. Fabiano worked for Sal. It was Mafia country on Central Park North. Sal Rubino had placed his pornography mill on a street that no one knew about. It was invisible to human traffic.
Caroll got into a cab and followed the Cadillac. Fabiano stopped at one of his haunts, a café on Pleasant Avenue, in the heart of Italian Harlem, which had dwindled to a one-block district. It was the safest block in New York City. Caroll entered the café. Fabiano’s bodyguard hopped out like a chess piece and stood in front of Caroll.
“It’s only the piccolino,” Caroll’s shylock said. “He doesn’t even have a gun. He’s going to be court-martialed pretty soon. He’s harmless.”
Caroll sat down next to the shylock, who offered him a salad with anchovies, a crust of Italian bread, and a clear soup with parsley and bits of egg yolk that swam around like tadpoles. It was a king’s lunch for Caroll, living away from his
soda crackers.
“Maestro, it’s very, very good.”
“I can’t lend you money,” Fabiano said. “Not in the state you’re in. You’re wearing Malik’s mark. And I’d rather not appear in the minutes of his court.”
“Fine. But I’d like to talk to Sal.”
“Forget Sal. Sal’s decided to become a ghost again. He’s a little gunshy when it comes to Malik.”
“Maestro, I’m surprised at you. Malik runs a police court. It has no authority outside Police Plaza.”
“That’s what you think. Malik will be governor one day. And he won’t forget. He’d love to start a crusade against our Family. No, I can’t afford you, piccolino. And neither can Sal.”
“Then you tell Sal that I send him regards from Delia.”
The shylock stared at the tadpoles in his soup. “Piccolino, you have a big mouth. You should start to pray that you’ll survive this restaurant. The chef has a very uncommon back door. It leads to the sewage-disposal plant on Wards Island.”
“You’ll disappoint Malik,” Caroll said. “And I don’t disappear that easy. I marked Pleasant Avenue on my wall. Someone’s bound to notice.”
“Shut up.”
“Congratulations for finding an address like Central Park North.”
“Don Fabiano,” the bodyguard said. “I could cut him so his mouth will never close.”
“Albert, who asked you? Just stay by the window.”
The shylock was jittery because the Rubinos were still at war with Jerry DiAngelis. Sal had to come back from the dead to reclaim his clan, or Fabiano would have floated in DiAngelis’ direction. Jerry’s younger brother was a parrot for the FBI who was in the witness protection program. His father-in-law, Izzy Wasser, a tactical genius, had suffered a stroke. Jerry had fallen on hard times. Half his crews had deserted him.
“There’s nothing unkosher about Delia St. John,” Fabiano said. “She’s the biggest child model in Manhattan … and she’s not even a child.”
“But she happens to model without her clothes.”
“Only some of the time,” Fabiano said.
“Then how come she’s hiding in a rat’s hotel?” Caroll stood up. “Thanks for the soup and salad.” He walked past the bodyguard and out the door, but he wasn’t finished. He took a bus down to the diamond district and waited for Fabiano, who liked to lend money to the merchants of Forty-seventh Street. The merchants were always short of cash. Fabiano arrived at his favorite little diamond market. He traveled from stall to stall, looking at diamonds, collecting his vig. Then he walked up to Forty-eighth and Fifth and entered the building where Papa Cassidy had his headquarters. Caroll didn’t believe in coincidences like that. He called Papa from the lobby as soon as Fabiano had left the building. Papa broke up a meeting to take Caroll’s call.
“Come upstairs, will you, Caroll?”
Caroll went through a wall of secretaries. Papa wore red suspenders and a striped shirt. Oh, you son of a bitch, Caroll sang to himself. Oh, you son of a bitch. Papa had to know about the vig. There was a marriage between Stewart Hines and Papa and Fabiano and Sal. And Caroll was on their merry-go-round. It was Papa who fed him to Sal. Oh, you son of a bitch.
“We were worried,” Papa said, offering Caroll a glass of champagne.
“I’m sorry about what happened at the museum. I didn’t mean to punch all those people.” Papa, Papa, I should have punched you.
“Where are you staying?”
“Here and there,” Caroll said. “I don’t have an address.”
“Think of the wife, Caroll boy. I don’t like leaving Diana all alone.”
With the servants, Papa, and the secretary.
“Montalbán’s a bad influence,” Papa said. “I’ll have to show him some of my teeth. And you don’t have to be frightened of that big black buck.”
“Big black buck?” Caroll said.
“Sweets. He shouldn’t have given you to the Turk. But Malik will be in for a surprise. You’ll have my whole team of lawyers at your court-martial.”
“Has Diana asked about me?”
“She’s worried to death.”
“But did she say anything?”
“That’s the problem. She’s never home. I keep talking to Susan, her secretary. She’s missed board meetings. She’s neglected her orchestra. Jagiello cries to me on the phone … I was hoping you could find her.”
“I’ll find her,” Caroll said, “like I found Delia St. John.”
All the bonhomie seemed to go out of Papa. Not even the red suspenders could bring back his good will.
“Are you hustling me, Caroll?”
“I wouldn’t know how to do that, sir.”
“You’re hustling me. Like you hustled my daughter … I’ll break your bones.”
“Delia,” Caroll said. “We were talking about Delia.”
“If it’s blackmail, you have the wrong customer. I never pay.”
He seized a lamp off his desk, pulled out the plug, and went after Caroll. God bless all venture capitalists. Caroll dodged the first swing of the lamp. Papa tried to crown him, but he wasn’t quick enough. Caroll grabbed Papa’s wrist, and they started to dance near the wall. Caroll was always dancing with other men. There was a terrible heat in Papa’s eye.
“Papa,” Caroll said, “put down the fucking lamp.”
The heat went out of Papa’s eye. He returned the lamp to his desk. He looked like one more foolish boy in his red suspenders, almost as foolish as Caroll, who couldn’t hold on to his gun or his wife, who built a nest on Central Park North, and was going to be swallowed up by Martin Malik.
“You’re the one,” Caroll said. “You fingered me. You’re my personal Judas.”
“Judas?” Papa said. “I don’t sell people for silver and gold.”
“That’s right. You sell them for free. You gave Sal Rubino the idea to cancel my vig. Now tell me you never sit down with gangsters, tell me you don’t know Sal.”
“Of course I know him. You can’t put up a building in New York without doing business with Rubino. He has a monopoly on all the cement.”
“It was Sal who introduced you to Delia … or was it Fabiano Rice? You back Fabiano, don’t you? You’re the shylock behind the shylock. You’re the banker in Sal’s loanshark operation. All the time I took from Fabiano, I was really borrowing from you.”
“You should have come to me first. I would have helped.”
“Jesus, do you hate me that much for marrying Diana?”
“I don’t hate you.”
“Then why did you sell me to Sal?”
“He was going to take Delia away.”
“She’s a child,” Caroll said. “I saw her naked in a goddamn pornography shop. She doesn’t even have any pubic hair.”
Papa smiled, and his eyes seemed human again. “The best fashion models shave between their legs. It turns the customers on.”
“You too, Papa?”
“I was impotent. Delia restored my life.”
“Your little love doll.”
“Don’t say that. If Sal can’t get you killed, I will.”
“You can’t kill me, Papa. Nobody can. I belong to Martin Malik.”
And Caroll got out of there. He went to the district attorney’s office down on John Street and asked one of the secretaries for assistant D.A. Cork Corcoran.
“Do you have an appointment, sir?”
“No, but tell him it’s the man from Central Park North. I’ll be outside the building.”
Corcoran was downstairs in a couple of minutes, looking piggly in his eyeglasses. “Oh, it’s you,” he said, squinting at Caroll.
“Who were you expecting, Cork?”
“Never mind.”
“Let’s talk about the People versus the Central Park North Pornographers’ Association.”
“Very funny.”
“We had a case. We caught the bastards with their cocks out.”
“Not here, Detective Brent. Not in the street.”
“Don’t flatter me, Cork. I’m not a detective anymore.”
“Yes you are. You haven’t been thrown off the Force. You’re just doing a little sweetheart time. Consider it a second honeymoon.”
“I’m waiting for Martin Malik.”
“Everybody waits for Malik. It means nothing … but we shouldn’t talk in the street. There are too many eyes and ears.”
And Caroll followed Corcoran through a passageway that led to a luncheonette on old Dutch Street. They grabbed a corner table and stirred their coffee with a spoon.
“We had a case,” Caroll insisted. “We had a case.”
“You had dick.”
“Yeah, a naked little girl.”
“She’s not so little,” Corcoran said. “She could be a hundred. No one can guess the age of Delia St. John.”
“Then you know about the girl.”
“Wake up. She’s the most notorious little cunt in the history of Manhattan.”
“Not so fast,” Caroll said.
“Little Delia has had half of Wall Street inside her pants. Is that slow enough for you, Detective Brent?”
“And we just happened to find her at a fucking charity hotel, Barbarossa and me.”
“Very funny. Barbarossa’s one of her clients. Yeah, he’s had relations with the girl. Who hasn’t? And you want me to indict? I don’t believe in fairy tales. The girl is protected, Caroll. She has the Mob behind her. She has Papa Cassidy, she has a couple of ex-governors. It’s a big can of worms. I’m not going to sink the D.A.’s office because Joe Barbarossa is on some kind of a trip, between politics and ping-pong.”
“So you walk away.”
“I walk when I have to walk. Caroll, it’s over your head … leave it alone.”
“I can’t.”
“Leave it alone.”
“Sure. That’s the dividing line. Central Park North. That’s the land of midnight. But I’m living there now, and I don’t like it.”
Caroll paid for the coffee and left the assistant D. A. in his own little corner on old Dutch Street.
16
He’d gone out and shaken the feathers around Delia St. John. And he’d have to bear the cost of all his enterprise. Fabiano must have talked to Sal. Caroll was a little too close to their kingdom, roosting at Lincoln Tower. They couldn’t afford to have him in the neighborhood. He wondered if Sal would send the same operator who tried to off Isaac under the bridge. A member of the Monday Morning Club. McSwain? The killer lady. The killer lady with a Glock. But it wouldn’t be McSwain. He began to drink from the bottle of Four Roses in his room. He had to prepare himself for the operator. He’d cut the lights and sit behind the door with the neck of the bottle in his fist. But he’d have to finish the bottle first.
Maria's Girls (The Isaac Sidel Novels) Page 11
