Maria's Girls (The Isaac Sidel Novels)

by Jerome Charyn

  He saw Dee hover around Caroll, with a starkness on her face, like some disjointed doll. Ah, he was the dollbreaker. Him, Sidel. And he fled from the scene of his own crime …

  She’d never been so bashful around a man. Caroll was the only cop in the city who could look magnificent in a blue sack. “I missed you,” she said. She had no idea how to woo a husband. “I wasn’t in love with Maria … can’t we go somewhere and talk?”

  He brought her to a trattoria in Little Italy where he would have lunch after his excursions to Police Plaza. The padrone let him have a corner table so they could sit in peace.

  “Where are you living?” she had to ask.

  “Different places … I moved back into Lincoln Tower. But don’t tell Isaac.”

  “That whores’ hotel?”

  “It’s my home,” Caroll said. “I bought a hot plate.”

  “But you have a home … with me.”

  “I’m not Park Avenue,” Caroll said. “I never was.”

  “If you’re allergic to Park Avenue, there are plenty of town houses on the market. I can—”

  “I don’t want town houses. I don’t want butlers. I don’t want dinner bells.”

  She started to cry. “You should have warned me about all that when you proposed.”

  “I didn’t propose,” Caroll said. “You did.”

  “Well, I couldn’t wait. It would have been a century before you decided on your own.”

  “Your father set me up, Dee. He can’t bear it that you’re with another man.”

  “Papa suffers so much that he’s marrying your fiancée.”

  “Don’t exaggerate,” Caroll said. “I was Delia’s bodyguard, that’s all.”

  “Did you handcuff her to the bed, Caroll, like you handcuffed me?”

  “I didn’t come here to talk details.” He stared at Diana’s purple eyes. “I suppose you were an icebox with Maria Montalbán.”

  “I wasn’t an icebox, but I didn’t sleep with him. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. We kissed. We—”

  “Shut up,” Caroll said. His legs were throbbing. He slapped her. “Ah, shit,” he said, getting up from the table. “If I have to hit you, what’s the use? You were with Maria. You were one of his girls.”

  He handed the padrone twenty dollars and took a cab uptown to his crib. He’d learned to control his whiskey ways. He never drank at Sherwood Forest. He only nibbled late at night.

  Barbarossa was in his room when Caroll arrived at the hotel. Vietnam Joe had started sucking on Caroll’s Four Roses. He looked funny with a sling.

  “There’s a Colombian coming to town with an awful lot of product. I can’t take him alone. Not with this contraption,” he said, pointing to the sling. “But with you, kid … it’s a piece of cake.”

  “Let it rest, Joe. You’re wearing the medal of honor.”

  “You didn’t tell Isaac, did ya? He was looking weird at the ceremony.”

  “What would I tell him, Joe? That I got a phone call from LeComte to rush over to the North Meadow. I had to grab you away from your ping-pong game. It was a phony deal. We come out a couple of heroes and Isaac could have been killed.”

  “The man has no life. He’s in love with that FBI bitch. The Roumanian princess, Margaret Tolstoy. She puts out for a hundred mobs.”

  “Stop it, Joe. You have no right to talk about him.”

  “Yeah, he kills Blue Eyes. He almost kills you. He sends out your wife on a mission to make it with Maria.”

  “Stop it,” Caroll said.

  “I’m speaking the truth, kid.”

  Caroll seized the Four Roses and jumped on Barbarossa. But he wouldn’t wrestle with a man in a sling. “What makes you so fucking holy? You rip off dealers before and after Medal Day. What do you do with all the money?”

  “I have my expenses,” Barbarossa said.

  “You sleep at Sherwood Forest. You don’t even have a place to wash your clothes. So don’t criticize Isaac. He isn’t LeComte’s errand boy.”

  “Gimme the bottle,” Barbarossa said.

  “No.”

  Barbarossa took his arm out of the sling, reached into his coat, smiled, and held his Glock to Caroll’s head.

  There wasn’t a beat of terror in Caroll’s eye. “Go on, Joe. Show me how good you are with a gun.”

  “Don’t push me, kid.”

  Barbarossa took back the bottle and walked out of Caroll’s crib. And Caroll was left all alone with that deepening view of the trees and a bit of metal over his heart.

  32

  He’d become Isaac of the public schools. He’d make pilgrimages into the heart of Manhattan, address most of Maria’s girls. He memorized passages from William Blake. “I wander thro’ each charter’d street,” he sang of Blake’s London town. “And mark in every face I meet … marks of weakness, marks of woe.”

  His favorite camping ground was a junior-high school on Montgomery Street where Maria had had his headquarters and little Rosen was the assistant principal before he tried to hang himself. Rosen must have healed. The local board had appointed him acting superintendent of District One B. Isaac had grown fond of the little man. They would have coffee together in the superintendent’s office. Both of them loved the Lower East Side and had an incurable constancy to schoolchildren.

  “I shouldn’t have been so hard on you, Rosen.”

  “It’s your job. You’re police commissioner.”

  “But I didn’t understand Maria … he had the curse, like you and me.”

  “He bent the law, Commissioner Sidel.”

  “I do it every day.”

  “I know,” the little man said. “But that’s our secret.”

  And Isaac would visit every single class, wearing a broken-billed baseball cap, and sometimes his fedora, like a Dead End Kid. He wouldn’t condescend to the children, tell sugared lies.

  “It’s getting too expensive to breathe.”

  “Then why should we bother with poetry, Mr. Isaac?” asked one of Maria’s girls.

  “Because if you can see through all the haze and read a wonderful line, then you’ll know you’re still alive.”

  “What if we don’t want to be alive?”

  “Ah, then I can’t help you.”

  He’d often cry into his own hat after one of these séances in the classroom, thinking of so many girls and boys without a real future.

  “I want to be an undercover cop,” said another one of Maria’s girls.

  “You’ll have to finish school and take a long test …”

  “And if I pass I’ll get a big pension.”

  Maria’s girls started to laugh.

  “What’s a charter’d street, Mr. Isaac?”

  “A street that has no room for children, that’s more interested in money than boys and girls, a street where mothers have no milk.”

  “Hey, that’s where I live.”

  “It’s Newyorico, man.”

  “What can we do about it, Mr. Isaac?”

  “Make a big stink. You scream and scream until somebody has to hear.”

  But Isaac couldn’t even hear the echo of his own screams. He went down into the street. A limo was waiting for him. It belonged to Becky Karp. “Get in,” the mayor said. And Isaac climbed into the back seat.

  “Where are we going, Rebecca?”

  “To Papa Cassidy’s wedding breakfast.”

  “It’s kind of late for breakfast.”

  “It’ll be a surprise.”

  “I’m not dressed for a wedding,” Isaac said, putting on his baseball beanie.

  “Papa will forgive you. You’re the Pink Commish”

  Isaac began to dread the ride.

  “Saturnino Gomez will be there, Gomez and his crowd, from the Harry S. Truman Club. I couldn’t face them without you, Isaac. You’re Saturnino’s dark horse. He thinks you’re going to steal the primaries from me.”

  “I never told him I would run for mayor. But you’d better worry about Malik. The Republicans are grooming him.�
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  “I don’t give a fart about the Republicans. Malik is just a screen.”

  “Should I put on a waiter’s coat at the wedding and sing that I’m for Becky Karp?”

  “Some singer. My own PC is mute on Medal Day. The cardinal had to bail you out. I don’t like it. You may be a fat cat to your own men. But no one has nine lives in my administration. Remember, you work for me.”

  “Sweetheart, how could I forget?”

  “You still have that whore on your mind, Tolstoy … she took you out of my bed.”

  He’d been visiting Becky Karp several times a month in her bunker at City Hall until Margaret Tolstoy popped back into his life, she who called herself “Anastasia” when she was a little girl. He couldn’t even kiss another woman, and he hadn’t seen Margaret since the melamed’s bingo party. Ah, he’d never survive the curse of a childhood romance.

  They arrived at the Ritz-Carlton. Papa Cassidy had reserved the roof. Isaac had never been to a champagne breakfast at noon. The bride wore a white breakfast gown with some kind of tail. Her long legs seemed to own the Ritz. Delia was the girl who could destroy an entire town. He didn’t think it had anything to do with acrobatics. She couldn’t have been so nimble with a hundred different men. It was the lost child in Delia, that perpetual state of puberty. You’d never grow old in her arms.

  But a pall seemed to enter the room with Isaac. It wasn’t his fault. The whole roof garden shunned Rebecca Karp. And Isaac realized that the bigwigs of her Party weren’t going to reelect her. She didn’t have a Chinaman’s chance.

  Isaac began to wonder why people were kissing his hand. And then he saw Saturnino Gomez. Saturnino dipped his knees to Isaac and stole him away from Becky Karp. The Pink Commish didn’t like it.

  “You’re deserting her, aren’t you?”

  “Hombre, she’s a drowning ship.”

  “I’m her police commissioner.”

  “The lady tried to put you in limbo, on permanent sick leave.”

  “I’m in limbo right now.”

  “Isaac, please. You’re the next mayor of New York. It’s been decided.”

  “Not by me … Gomez, how did it feel when you played for the Chicago Cubs?”

  “I’m talking strategy, and you want a trip down memory lane.”

  “How did it feel?”

  “Like shit. I was a Newyorican rookie. The old-timers pissed on my shoe … Isaac, I have much more fun at the Harry Truman Club. And you’re our candidate.”

  Isaac ran from Saturnino Gomez, but he couldn’t avoid all the handkissers.

  “Your Honor,” a tall dark woman whispered in his ear.

  “Go away,” Isaac said.

  His vertigo came back. Isaac never cared for roof gardens. He couldn’t escape the bride and groom. “Uncle Isaac,” Delia said, lacing her arm in his. Papa Cassidy wore a ruffled shirt, like a highwayman. Isaac didn’t have to imagine their conjugations in Papa’s king-sized bed.

  Papa pawed at him. “Let’s bury the hatchet.”

  “Why, Papa? You never liked me.”

  “It’s all in the past,” Papa said. “You’re my angel, Isaac. If you hadn’t closed down Delia’s clubs, she might never have come to me … I know who my friends are. Caroll isn’t here. Not even my daughter. The cardinal wouldn’t marry me in his rotten cathedral. He’ll suffer, believe me.”

  “Well, I’m here as the mayor’s guest. Be nice to her.”

  “I am nice.”

  He winked at Isaac and led his bride toward Saturnino Gomez. “Hold on to Becky,” Isaac muttered into the side of Papa’s face.

  He was about to retire from the roof when he saw a ravaged man. It was Rubino in his chair, with Margaret behind the wheels. The politicos kissed his hand and bowed to him, like they’d done to Isaac. Rubino had lost his captains, but not his cement companies, and cement was king of New York City’s “crops.” Isaac wanted Anastasia. Her hair was blond today. He wondered how many wigs she had in her closet.

  Delia kept saying, “Uncle Sal, Uncle Sal.” And Isaac couldn’t tell which misery was worse—seeing Margaret at the wedding breakfast or not seeing her at all. She wouldn’t glance at Isaac. Her eyes were faraway moons. Isaac felt a claw on his arm.

  Rubino had wheeled himself over to the Pink Commish. “You’re alive and Nose is dead. That’s quite an accomplishment.”

  “LeComte orchestrated the whole affair. So you can thank your master.”

  “You don’t have to insult me.”

  “I’m sorry, Sal. Just give me Margaret and I’ll never insult you again.”

  “She’s not mine to give. Margaret’s on loan from D.C. And Justice aint getting her back. But you have compensation. I proposed you for mayor. I talked to Gomez.”

  Isaac’s pager began to sing. “Excuse me,” he said. He unclipped the device and saw the number of Central Park Precinct in the little blue screen. One of the waiters brought him a telephone. He dialed Sherwood Forest. Caroll came on the line. Isaac had a nasty premonition in his bones.

  “It’s Captain White, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” Caroll said. “Killed himself.”

  “Don’t let anyone touch him, kid. Not the fingerprint boys, not some sleuth from One PP. You’re in charge until I get there.”

  Ah, he should have figured on White. Cap didn’t have the temperament to be an assassin. White had his own worm that ate at him. As Isaac got onto the elevator, Margaret turned to look at him, and those faraway moons seemed to form a hook right into his gut. He had to clutch his belly on the ride down from the roof. His driver was waiting near the hotel.

  “Sherwood Forest, Sergeant. Lights and siren, please.”

  And Sergeant Malone brought him into the Park …

  Isaac could keep away his own lads, but not the cardinal archbishop of New York. Jim was waiting for Isaac in the captain’s office. White’s head lay on his desk, in some terrible slumber. His eyes were open. His left ear looked like a bloody balloon.

  “It’s my fault,” Isaac said. “I shouldn’t have left him alone. He needed counseling …”

  “I counseled him, Isaac, as much as any man could.”

  “You knew about what happened under the bridge … before I ever did.”

  “Indeed. The poor sod didn’t really confess. He’d talk around it at one or two of our gatherings. ‘I’m Mr. Midnight.’ I had to measure the man. I knew he wouldn’t try it again. There was some danger, Isaac, but I wanted him to tell you. He waited too long. And he couldn’t recover from that wait.”

  “Will you bury him?”

  “Jesus, the Church would never allow it. He’ll have to lie in some unholy grave.”

  “But will you pray for him?”

  “I can’t.”

  “Will you, Jim?”

  “He’ll be in my thoughts. That’s all I can say on the subject … take care of Caroll. He’s gloomy without his wife.”

  “I shouldn’t have enlisted Dee.”

  “You’re an enlister. That’s what you are. And I wouldn’t run for mayor if I was you. We’d fight all the time. I’d have to show you who’s boss.”

  And Cardinal Jim walked out of the office.

  It was Caroll who’d opened the door and found Captain White, after hearing a great boom that shivered the walls of Sherwood Forest. It was Caroll who’d had Isaac paged, who’d helped put the captain in a body bag, and then returned to his crib. He had his Four Roses. It was too early to nibble. He looked up. Isaac was in the room, wearing his baseball hat.

  “White was the phantom hitter, wasn’t he? He socked you and then he felt sorry. It was a secret you shared with the Cap and Cardinal Jim … ah, he was cracking up. I could see his scared eyes. He had the stink of the dead.”

  “I forgot all about him, kid. I blanked him out.”

  “He was a leper. A cop who shoots another cop … and I’m the skel who saved your life. I ought to give my medal to LeComte. He dropped the dime, I didn’t. I ran to the baseball field. I went
for the Nose. It was my glory assignment.”

  “Ah, you did what you could.”

  “I betrayed you, Isaac. I was a little soldier for the FBI.”

  “I’m still breathing,” Isaac said.

  “You live inside a whole circle of betrayers. That’s all the family you have left.”

  “Stop it. I hurt you. I stole Diana. You had the right. I made her become a spy.”

  “No one makes Dee do anything.”

  “I filled her head with romance. She was part of my children’s crusade. You had the right. You had the right.”

  Caroll looked up again and Isaac was gone. One more phantom of Central Park. He sucked on his bottle. He should have joined Barbarossa’s brigade. He’d rip off all the traficantes. He’d wear a white mask. He heard a knock on his door. Caroll hid the Four Roses.

  The phantom had come to take back the combat cross.

  “Boss, it’s open. Come in.”

  He prayed that his eyes would focus. But he could always pretend to recognize Isaac.

  “You’re blotto.”

  It was a woman’s voice.

  Caroll closed his eyes. There was a man behind the woman, carrying a bunch of pigskin bags. Dee and her butler. Caroll couldn’t mistake that million-dollar luggage.

  “Jeremy, have a drink.”

  “He’s not supposed to drink,” Diana said. “Jeremy, say good-bye.”

  “Good-bye,” the butler said.

  And Caroll was alone with Diana in a land of pigskin.

  “I’m frightened,” she said. “It’s a big step. Living in one little room.”

  “I didn’t invite you.”

  “You said no town houses. I got the message.”

  “Dee, you can’t live here. We have cockroaches in the hall.”

  “I like the view,” she said. “Don’t worry about all the luggage. We’ll throw away what doesn’t fit … or give it to a neighbor.”

  “My neighbor’s a drag queen.”

  “That’s perfect. He can wear all my clothes.”

  And she put both her arms around Caroll.

  33

  She was Margaret of the many names, who’d once been her own little princess, Anastasia of Paris and Odessa and the Lower East Side. She’d gone to kindergarten with the KGB. She’d gotten “married” when she was twelve. Her husband, Ferdinand Antonescu, gave her a platinum ring he’d stolen from a Jewish prince. Ferdinand was the emperor of Odessa during World War II. He had his own little Gestapo state, called Transnistria. While Odessa starved, he borrowed young boys from the insane asylum and fed her on their flesh. She was a whore, a mistress, a cannibal, and a wife who played with dolls and entertained generals from the German high command. She wasn’t a long-legged mannequin, like Delia St. John. She had her first gray hairs when she was fourteen. She was caught between the Russians, the Roumanians, the Germans, the Poles, and certain immigration officers of the United States.