Maria's Girls (The Isaac Sidel Novels)

by Jerome Charyn

  “Should I laugh you out of my office, Isaac?”

  “It’s not Caroll’s fault. I sent him into the bush. He was hunting down pianos with missing legs.”

  “And did those piano legs also have a vig?”

  “Martin, I’m your man. I killed Sal Rubino.”

  “Do dead men ride in wheelchairs? Shame on you.”

  And Isaac had to start fishing with Martin Malik. “You’ve been seen in the company of Delia St. John.”

  “That’s no crime. I’m a bachelor, Isaac.”

  “And she’s a fucking child.”

  “Check her birth certificate.”

  “I don’t think she has one.”

  “That’s because she’s been a minor for the last twenty years. Isaac, you appointed me, remember? I’m hard to scare.”

  “I could put in a leak to the New York Times about certain sex orgies.”

  “Sex orgies? I’ve always gone solo with Delia. Ask her yourself.”

  “But a leak like that would ruin your career.”

  “Not at all. I’d get invited on the Today Show. They’d love my Turkish smile. You’re pathetic, Isaac. I’d box your ears if you weren’t such a sick man. You ought to try Delia. She’s a terrific health tonic.”

  “Martin, I’ll be back on the floor one day.”

  “I’d like that. You’re my favorite Commish.”

  And Isaac walked out of One PP.

  He rode the subway up to Caroll’s hotel on Central Park North. His room was cluttered with whiskey bottles, but Caroll wasn’t there. Isaac stared at that long, long sweep of trees from Caroll’s window. He ventured into the Park and hopped around the edges of the Harlem Meer. He arrived at the north playing fields. He didn’t see his Giants. The fields were desolate. The wind crept under his fedora. Isaac stood on a baseball diamond. Two men approached him. They wore camel’s-hair coats and black leather gloves. Isaac understood their tale. These were minor-league enforcers for one of Sal’s crews. They grabbed at Isaac, pulled on him, knocked the fedora off his head. Nothing serious. But even their child’s play hurt. That’s how tender he was.

  “Greetings, Don Isacco.”

  “From the Rubino baseball club?” Isaac asked.

  “No names. We didn’t mention names.”

  They were runaways, Isaac realized. Weren’t even on orders from Sal. They’d been hired to watch over Isaac, and now they wanted a little fun. They crushed his hat with their heels. They shoved Isaac between them.

  “It’s nice to play catch with a sack of shit.”

  Isaac grew dizzy. He didn’t have the air in his lungs to lend himself to their game. But the shoving stopped. He recognized two gigantic paws entangling the camel’s-hair coats. It was Harry on the handle. The Bomber was beating both enforcers into the ground. They whimpered. They’d never seen hands as quick as Harry’s. Strings of blood appeared on the brown coats.

  “Harry, that’s enough. We don’t have the right insurance to cover a murder rap. Let ’em go.”

  Harry launched them toward second base with a kick. Then he stooped for Isaac’s fedora and rebuilt the crown with one of his enormous hands, as if he were perfecting the pocket of a baseball glove. Those hands of the Bomber’s had a majesty Isaac would never know. There was no room for the Bomber in this civilization. He was a discarded player, coaching a children’s team.

  “I like to come here,” Harry said. “I like to feel a diamond. That’s how you win.”

  He was almost as ragged as Isaac himself. Grown boys who’d never recovered from the affliction of baseball. Isaac was only an amateur. He hadn’t been on the field with Harry. But his affliction was almost as great.

  “Harry, let’s go up to the Polo Grounds.”

  “Don’t get weird,” the Bomber said.

  “I want to stand there. In the projects.”

  “It’s a waste of time.”

  “Let’s find the old diamond.”

  “Don’t get weird.”

  “Is it true that Mel Ott was only five foot two?”

  “He was taller than that,” Harry said.

  “You should have been the most valuable player of nineteen forty-three.”

  “Come on. We sat in the basement all year. Musial was the man.”

  “You had more homers, more runs batted in. You had the big glove.”

  “We were cellar rats,” the Bomber said. “Musial had the career. I was a war baby.”

  “You shouldn’t have jumped to the Mexican League.”

  “Isaac, I’m sick of your fan’s notes. I’m Harry Lieberman. I was in the majors. That’s enough.”

  He abandoned Isaac, crossing the diamond to some universe all his own, where adorers like Isaac couldn’t get in.

  He plotted Sal’s destruction, but he didn’t have the players, he didn’t have the team. He was one more isolated mensch, a commissioner without his portfolio of tricks. He could have stolen a sound truck and listened to Sal’s conversation with the help of wire tits. But first he’d have to locate Sal, and the Pink Commish grew tired after walking ten blocks. He sat home and squeezed rubber balls to strengthen his wrists. He did calisthenics in the corner. His calf muscles had disappeared during his sojourn in the hospital. He couldn’t seem to get them back.

  He made no phone calls. He didn’t have any guests. He dined at a little Newyorican café on Norfolk Street. Maria’s picture was on the wall, next to Ronald Reagan. Isaac was the odd man out. He didn’t mourn his loss of celebrity on the Lower East Side. It was still his Cradle. He’d been reared on these streets.

  His phone started ringing. It was Sweets.

  “Maria’s dead.”

  “Dead? Did he overdose? Or cut his heart out?”

  “He was glocked.”

  “Under the Williamsburg Bridge?” Isaac asked, with a frozen smile.

  “He wasn’t that lucky. It was a back lot on a Hundred and Tenth Street. Near the Park Avenue trestle. The killer’s a sweetheart. He picked up all the shells. And he loves to zap people against a wall. The bullets won’t tell us shit. We’ll have copper slugs without a single groove.”

  “When was Maria killed?”

  “Yesterday,” Sweets said.

  “And I wasn’t told about it? The Crime Scene boys were all over the place … I could have found something, Sweets.”

  “That’s the problem. You’re one of the suspects.”

  “Then come over and read me my rights.”

  “Isaac, you shouldn’t have had such a hard-on for Maria. A PC with a personal vendetta. It doesn’t look so good. You’re the phantom’s first victim. You could have copied his M.O.”

  “Will you give me a couple of minutes to invent an alibi?”

  “It’s okay, Isaac. We already checked. You were having a café con leche on Norfolk Street when Maria took the hit.”

  “So now you call me, now you give me the news.”

  Isaac went to the morgue at Bellevue to visit Maria. The eyes were closed. The skin around Marias wounds was a violent blue. His hands looked like pieces of leather. Isaac had wanted to drive Maria out of the schools, not see him on a coroner’s table.

  He called Sherwood Forest. White wasn’t there. The captain was at home in Marble Hill, the little nub of Manhattan that was part of the mainland now. No one liked to remember that Manhattan wasn’t such a perfect island. A little swamp had separated it from the Bronx. The swamp was filled in, and a channel was cut across Spuyten Duyvil creek to create the “island” of Manhattan. But a hundred years ago any little girl and boy could have jumped over the swamp and had their own mainland. And White had a two-story house on Jacobus Avenue, in the Bronx’s little Manhattan.

  The captain wasn’t so glad to see Isaac outside his door.

  “Couldn’t you have met me at the precinct?”

  “It can’t wait,” Isaac said. And he entered the captain’s house. It had glorious chandeliers and a view of the rapids where boats had been lost in the days of the Dutch.

>   “Not a word to the wife,” the captain said.

  “Forget the niceties, Cap. Maria Montalbán was killed.”

  “I know. It was in all the papers.”

  “But the papers couldn’t have told you he was glocked.”

  White pointed to the ceiling, and Isaac followed him upstairs to the attic. The captain was trembling. He showed Isaac his suitcase full of cash.

  “I’m not interested in your money, Cap. It’s Maria. Did Fabiano get in touch? Did he offer you another suitcase?”

  “Isaac, on my mother’s grave, I didn’t go near Maria.”

  “It had your fucking signature. A killer’s kiss.”

  “I wasn’t there.”

  “Then tell me who could have copied your style?”

  “I had no style, Isaac. I glocked you.”

  “Glocked me against a wall. Picked up the shells. Erased yourself from the crime scene.”

  Isaac watched the captain cry. “It’s a holdup, isn’t it? You want your revenge. I’ll go to Sweets. I’ll confess. I’ll tell him what happened under the bridge. But I won’t take the fall for Maria Montalbán. I won’t eat your shit.”

  “Go to Sweets,” Isaac said. “That’s brilliant. You’ll have murder one on your menu. You’ll never see the sky again.”

  “Stay away from me, Isaac. You look like death wearing a hat.”

  “Thanks to you, Captain Midnight … Fabiano never got in touch after you glocked me? Not even to ask for a second try?”

  “Not once.”

  “Ah, I believe you,” Isaac said. He pulled the fedora over his eye and left that house on Marble Hill.

  22

  Isaac rested two days and went up to the Polo Grounds projects, near Edgecombe Avenue and Jackie Robinson Park. He couldn’t conjure up a baseball diamond, or the lost walls of that playing field he’d loved. He saw high-rise monoliths with a red and gray girth, he saw housing cops in cracked leather jackets, he saw Maria’s girls. A hundred of them, holding red candles and sobbing in a crooked line that moved between the monoliths. Miranda Smith, that slightly pregnant rebel leader, was with them, clutching her own red candle and leading a rebel chant.

  “Who killed Maria?” she asked.

  And the girls answered, “A snake in the grass.”

  Isaac felt like that snake. He was monstrously cold. He had chilblains on his hands. His toes were numb. He hadn’t read Maria the right way. He’d scrutinized Maria’s methods, watched the school supplies travel with the dope, but he hadn’t looked into the faces of Maria’s girls.

  Who would cry for him? Isaac, the snake in the grass. He’d perched too long on the fourteenth floor, and the City had grown out from under him. Chasing crime, he’d lost his sense of the street. Harry could feel a baseball diamond, Isaac couldn’t. He’d become an invalid long before the Cap had glocked him under the bridge. He should have followed the schoolchildren, not the school supplies.

  He returned home to his crib. He exercised. Peculiar muscles appeared on his neck. He meditated in front of his own crooked wall. His chest thickened bit by bit. He was like a baby bear. He’d cry for no reason at all. He had to relearn Manhattan. He’d walk out into Maria’s town, have his rice and beans, sit among all the little shrines to Maria at his own café on Norfolk Street. He sat in the middle of a red gloom, with lit candles on every shelf. He hiked up to Harlem, his breath coming back. He stood under the trestle where Maria had been glocked. He couldn’t conjure up the killer or even any clues. But all that meditation must have given him some magic. He saw Maria’s fur coat. The coat was walking toward the trestle. It had a head of yellow hair and the long legs of an aristocrat. He recognized Delia St. John under the dark glasses. She couldn’t keep to a straight line. The children’s model was drunk. Her mouth gurgled in the cold air.

  He trapped her under the trestle. “Do you know me?” Isaac asked.

  She tilted his fedora with two fingers and said, “You’re the high commissioner.”

  “Where’s Caroll?”

  “I can’t say … told me not to tell.”

  She started to hiccup. And Isaac felt strange. He wanted to hug her the way he’d hug a little girl. Delia wasn’t a little girl. Now he understood her pull. Making love to her must have been like ravaging a grown-up child. But he didn’t want to make Delia St. John. She was almost another daughter to Isaac, another Marilyn the Wild.

  “Did you steal Maria’s mink coat?”

  “Maria gave it to me … got rid of all his valuables.”

  “Who killed him?”

  “Uncle Sal, I think.”

  “Take me to Caroll … please.”

  “You’re shivering,” she said. She thrust her arm inside Isaac’s and led him up to Central Park North and Caroll’s hotel. Caroll was sleeping in that room of whiskey bottles. Before Isaac could turn his head, Delia was gone. He hadn’t even asked her about Martin Malik.

  He sat beside the bed until Caroll opened his eyes.

  “How are you, kid?”

  Caroll groaned. “Is that you, Isaac?”

  “Himself.”

  “Go away,” Caroll said, with his whiskey face.

  “I can’t.”

  “I’ll strangle you, Isaac, the minute I wake up.”

  “Maria’s dead.”

  “Aren’t you glad? You don’t have to count the missing board erasers. You don’t have to track his mules. And I don’t have to pretend I’m a parent at one of his schools.”

  “We have to find his murderer.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “You’re a cop,” Isaac said.

  “No. I’m a man waiting for Martin Malik. The Department can eat my shield.”

  “You’re a cop. That’s all you know.”

  “You’re wrong. I dance a lot with Delia. I go to parties. I’m her bodyguard.”

  “Like Joe Barbarossa.”

  “I bumped Joe. I’m Delia’s steady.”

  “You have a wife.”

  Caroll lunged at Isaac and nearly fell off the bed. “Don’t you tell me that. You got her involved with Maria … you lousy pimp. You peddled Dee behind my back.”

  “I didn’t peddle her. I was trying to unwrap his machinery, all his contact points. Dee was my avenue to all that.”

  “And what did you discover, you son of a bitch? He was one more teacher-poet, fighting the Board of Ed. The cavalier of school supplies. He couldn’t have run the schools with his dope money.”

  “He spent half that money on himself.”

  “So what? He wouldn’t have been Maria without his mink.”

  “Then help me find his murderer.”

  “You were the triggerman, Isaac. Sal killed him because you were getting too close to Maria.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Delia told me. She got it straight from the wheelchair. Uncle Sal. He’s been toying with you, Isaac.”

  “Toying, huh? His soldiers beat up your wife.”

  “Dee’s a survivor. She always was.”

  “Half her lights are out.”

  “I’m not going back to that mansion, Isaac. I like it here. I have my view. I have my whiskey. I have Delia. All the nabobs can love her. I don’t care.”

  “You’re a cop. You weren’t made for the bodyguard business.”

  “Isn’t that how I met Dee? Guarding her body?”

  “That was different,” Isaac said. “You were protecting her from the slasher of Central Park.”

  “Fred the gardener? He was a lamb. Dee liked to run around the Reservoir in her underwear.”

  “That’s not an invitation to poke her with a knife.”

  “Did anybody die of Fred’s wounds? I feel closer to Fred than to you, and I only met him twice. He doesn’t vampire people, he doesn’t steal their blood. He fell in love with some phantom lady. He wanted to marry her. That was his crime.”

  “It’s like a fairy tale, isn’t it?”

  “No. A fucking fable. Millionairesses don’t marry gardeners
. But they might marry a cop.”

  “Dee loves you. She’s hurting, kid. Can’t you listen?”

  “Then you lick her wounds. Get out of here.”

  “You stay, I stay,” Isaac said.

  Delia returned with two men in mink coats. They were bouncers from one of her “bodegas,” those nightclubs without a license, where Delia loved to dance. They were ex-cops who’d gone through Malik’s court. And Isaac had thrown them out of the Department on Malik’s recommendation. They were bully boys who’d extorted money from impoverished grocers. They hadn’t forgotten their former chief.

  “How’s Malik?” the older one asked. He had several aliases. He was called Tippy at the club. The other one was called Sam.

  “Malik’s well.”

  “Is he still stealing badges?”

  “I didn’t bring you to chat,” Delia said. “Caroll’s tired. I want Uncle Isaac out of the room.”

  “One question,” Sam said. “Uncle Isaac, Barbarossa’s done more damage than I ever did. He’s popped people. He’s robbed drugs. And Malik never went after him.”

  “That’s life,” Isaac said. “Joe wouldn’t get down on grocers. He wouldn’t sock the same old man twice.”

  The two bouncers went after Isaac. Caroll had to get out of bed. He still had whiskey in his eyes. He pulled the bouncers’ guns from under their coats while they struggled with the Pink Commish and dug the barrels into their foreheads.

  “You wouldn’t shoot,” Sam said.

  “Don’t depend on it. I’m dizzy. I might fall and start an accident. Your brains would leak.”

  “He’s ungrateful,” Sam said. “We come over to help the prick …”

  “And he takes our cannons,” Tippy said.

  The bouncers walked out.

  Isaac left Caroll alone with Delia. “I’m sorry,” he said, and wandered into the hallway like a mud rat out of the water.

  Caroll searched for a fresh bottle of Four Roses. He broke the seal. He drank the honey-colored liquid in great gulps. He landed on the bed with Delia beside him, Delia the professional child. They kissed. He didn’t have to handcuff her. Delia wasn’t very active. Her coldness would drive a man crazy. Delia was always somewhere else.

  He would escort her to the bodegas, dance with Delia, and discourage unwelcome guests. He was forever shoving people. And Delia took care of his hotel bill. She gave him pocket money and kept him in Four Roses, adding up the sums with a little calculator. Every single one of her gestures had become a business. She performed while she brushed her teeth. She had her “Uncles,” who were loyal and loving to Delia St. John. And Caroll would deliver her to each Uncle. He had to withstand the demon glares of Papa Cassidy and Martin Malik, who’d decide Caroll’s future with the police. Caroll had no future. He had a room on Central Park North. He had his Four Roses. He also had a wife …