The Good Policeman (The Isaac Sidel Novels)

by Jerome Charyn

Isaac knew he was healthy again. “Goddamn, get me out of these baby clothes.”

  “Can’t,” Sweets said.

  “I’m your boss, Mr. Sweets. I could laugh you right out of Headquarters. You’ll love walking the South Bronx during the witches’ hour.”

  “You can call me Captain Midnight. But you’re staying in bed.”

  “There’s a woman,” Isaac muttered. “It’s personal business, Sweets. I have to rely on you.”

  “Then tell me about it.”

  “There isn’t that much to tell. I was speaking at the Christy Mathewson Club and there she was.”

  “Who?”

  “Anastasia.”

  “Isaac, can you be a little more specific than that?”

  “You know the history books. Anastasia was Czar Nicholas’ youngest daughter. Most people think she was killed with the rest of the czar’s family after the revolution. But every five or ten years a woman would show up, swearing she was Anastasia.”

  “And you met her at the Christys.”

  “No,” Isaac said. “I knew another Anastasia, when I was a kid on the Lower East Side. She came to our school one winter, out of nowhere. It was during the war. She was a refugee. From Russia, I think. I don’t know how the hell she escaped. But she was living with some uncle or an aunt. And she had all this European culture. She’d studied ballet in Moscow or Budapest. She could rattle off French until our teachers were dizzy. She’d read Turgenev and she was thirteen. We were all in love with her. And she played with us, said she was Her Imperial Highness, the Princess Anastasia … Anastasia with torn socks.”

  “And what happened?”

  “I told you, Sweets. I was crazy about her. Once she took me home to tea. Her aunt was poor as a mouse, but she had a samovar, and we had this black, black tea with strawberry jam in glasses with a silver handle … it was high society.”

  “Did you kiss her?”

  “I never had the chance. She only lasted one winter with those torn socks. And then she was gone … to a different uncle or an aunt. But Sweets, she had the whitest skin. You could almost feel the bones of her face, see them move.”

  “And you want me to find her?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s her real name?”

  Isaac held his cheek. “Anastasia. That’s what we called her in class.”

  “Okay, you want me to find this anonymous article with a nickname who appeared and disappeared half a lifetime ago. How many men should I put on the case?”

  “I told you. It’s personal business. I want you to contact the Ivanhoes.”

  Sweets fished into his suit and slapped a gold badge into Isaac’s hand. “I resign. I’m not working with those fuckers.”

  “Please,” Isaac said.

  “Isaac, Burton Bortelsman was with the security police in Johannesburg. Do you know how many black people he tortured and killed?”

  “He was a homicide detective in Capetown.”

  “Yeah, that’s his legend. But I know different. I’ll kill him myself.”

  “I need you … and the Ivanhoes. Or I’ll never find her.”

  “They’re your jackals, Isaac. Use them all you want. But I’m not working with Bortelsman.”

  “All right,” Isaac muttered, half his head inside the nappy. “But take back the shield. Don’t resign on me.”

  Sweets clutched the badge in his paw. “Isaac, you’ll find that princess. Didn’t she come looking for you at the Christys? She’ll look for you again.”

  “No, no. It was a fluke. I don’t think she even recognized me. I was a little kid … and she was Anastasia. How would she know I’d become a cop?”

  “She’ll find you,” Sweets said, tucking Isaac under his quilt, and the First Dep’s voice seemed far away, like the mist out of some magic vaporizer. Isaac fell asleep in his nappy.

  5

  He should have been sick and pale, but he’d acquired a golden pallor in the hospital, as if he’d swallowed some sun. He had documents to sign. The mayor called. Isaac couldn’t deal with the folders on his desk. Anastasia. One of his sergeants caught him crying. The sergeant’s name was Malone. He was Don Isacco’s bodyguard and driver. Malone squinted at Isaac. Ah, the old boy’s bereaved. Must have been a death in the family. Isaac was mourning himself. He missed the boy he had been, the boy who would sneak into the Polo Grounds and watch the Bomber play, sit with the high aristocracy in a Lower East Side flat while he looked at Anastasia, longed for her into the deepest night. Now Isaac understood the melody of his whole romantic life. He’d married Anastasia, not Kathleen, but he was a bridegroom without a bride. He’d missed her all these years in some primitive spot beyond a police commissioner’s ordinary dreams. He hadn’t thought of Anastasia; he’d lived her absence in his bearish body. It was his daughter Marilyn who had the same aristocratic mien. Marilyn had become his memory of Russian tea.

  Burt, the Afrikaner, brought him out of his gloom. He arrived at One Police Plaza, which was forbidden ground to the Ivanhoes. But Isaac was glad to see him. Burt would understand all the enigmas of unrequited love. He wouldn’t plague the PC about Anastasia, like Sweets had done. He’d come disguised as an Austrian police chief with a special permit to see the Commish. His papers were impeccable. Isaac had terrific forgers at that shirt factory where the Ivanhoes lived. He was almost in the mood to kiss Burt. He needed his Ivanhoes around him.

  Burton whispered something.

  “Can’t hear you,” Isaac said.

  “Get that nigger off my back.”

  “Burt, what the hell—”

  “I’m Herr Klein,” Burt said, pointing to his Austrian police chief’s badge. Both of them knew the office was bugged. LeComte had tapped into Isaac’s side of the commissioners’ floor. His soundmen had also gone into Isaac’s toilet. The PC couldn’t even crap alone.

  They went down three flights to a neutral toilet.

  “Your First Dep has been threatening me.”

  “Well, he’s kind of ticklish about Afrikaners, Burt.”

  “I had nothing to do with security. I was with the criminal brigade.”

  “I believe you. But I can’t blame Sweets if he doesn’t.”

  “Isaac, I will hurt him, hurt him bad, if he starts knocking on my door … I traced the woman.”

  “What woman?”

  “The princess Sweets told me about.”

  “Anastasia?” Isaac said. “Burton, how did you do it?”

  “I stole the Christys’ guest list. I talked to a couple of people, including Schyler Knott. Told him I was with the Treasury Department. He opened up.”

  “Well, who is she?”

  “Her maiden name is Margaret Tolstoy.”

  “Maiden name?”

  “She’s married to a mob accountant.”

  “You’re out of your fucking mind.”

  “Isaac, don’t get cheeky. Her husband is a baseball nut. His name is Martin Crabbs. He works for DiAngelis. But he’s not your usual lowlife. He was born Martin Krabnikov. His people are from the Ukraine. He graduated magna cum laude from Columbia College.”

  “That’s my school,” Isaac said between his teeth. He’d had one semester at the college before he dropped out to support his drowning family.

  “Crabbs was on the fencing team … Isaac, are you listening? Or should I burn the file?”

  “I’m listening,” Isaac said. “When did he marry Anastasia?”

  “Margaret, you mean.”

  “Yes, Margaret Tolstoy, with the hole in her socks.”

  A couple of deputy chief inspectors marched into the toilet, saw the PC with a stranger, and marched out again. Isaac was doing business, or he wouldn’t have come down to their facility. He was the brain, the big mover, and they didn’t question his motives.

  The deputies distracted him, and Isaac had to repeat himself. “When did this Krabnikov marry Margaret Tolstoy?”

  “I didn’t say it was a legal marriage.”

  “Then she’s his squa
w. But how long have they been together?”

  “A year or two at the most.”

  “And before that? Who was she with?”

  “That’s the puzzle, Isaac. There is no record of Margaret Tolstoy until she married the accountant. She suddenly surfaced. Out of some little black bottle.”

  “The mystery woman, Margaret Tolstoy. You’re my catcher, Burt. I want a complete dossier.”

  “Isaac, I’m telling you, Margaret Tolstoy didn’t exist.”

  “Don’t die on me, Burt. If she had another identity, find it.”

  “There’s nothing, nothing at all.”

  “Try Anastasia,” Isaac said.

  “I already did.”

  “Then go to Crabbs … or Krabnikov.”

  “That’s difficult. He’s in hiding. There’s a rumor going around that LeComte’s boys are getting ready to subpoena him. They want DiAngelis.”

  “So he’s missing in action … like Maurice.”

  “Exactly,” Burton said.

  “Did you know that Schyler Knott went to school with little Maurie? And Maurie has a new boyfriend. Schyler says so. Some merry lad who’s a male nurse. But Schyler can’t remember the hospital.”

  “I could ease his memory a bit,” Burton said.

  “But be careful. I don’t want Schyler bruised. And you’ll have to zigzag a lot. LeComte is onto us.”

  “I told you, Isaac. He’ll fuck me one of these days, LeComte will.”

  “Not without fucking himself. That’s the main reason we take his money.”

  “Don’t kid yourself,” the Afrikaner said. “You’re married to the man. You’re his Hamilton Fellow.”

  “That’s a thing of the past.”

  “Whose past? Yours or his?”

  And Burton left him there, king of the john. Isaac hadn’t even unbuttoned his fly. He stared into the mirror and could almost see the Bomber out in some center field behind the silvery dimensions of the glass. In a couple of seasons the Bomber had formed Isaac more completely than any other man or boy had done. Isaac still dreamt of himself as some ideal center fielder during the war. He couldn’t imagine anything more heroic than hopping after baseballs in the middle of the afternoon. He was a Depression baby. He grew up with hunger all around him, when a free sandwich was the best sort of currency a boy could have. He was happiest during the war, when he stole ration booklets, defied the air-raid wardens, had Harry Lieberman … and Anastasia. He’d heard about the death camps, and he realized what would happen to him if the Nazis ever got to New York. But the Lower East Side had its own odd immunity. Not even the Nazis could have won the winter away from Orchard Street, where the clothing barrels would have served as a natural defense line. And he couldn’t get the aroma of Russian tea out of his nostrils.

  It wasn’t so clever of him to walk down to Mulberry Street in the thick of a snowstorm and stand outside the Baron di Napoli rifle club, with its dark green windows, and pretend he was some scarecrow. The rifle club was under constant surveillance. A panel truck with the most sophisticated sound equipment the Bureau could buy was parked across the street. LeComte’s soundmen could pick up Isaac’s heartbeat. But Isaac preferred it this way, rather than a secret rendezvous with Jerry DiAngelis, the youngest of the dons. DiAngelis hadn’t been born into one of the Families. He hadn’t married a Mafia princess. He’d made his bones in the street. His wife wasn’t even a Siciliana. She was the daughter of a struggling Hebrew schoolteacher, a melamed who had neither position nor wealth to aid a future don. Jerry DiAngelis was bitten in the ass by a witch, the Sicilians liked to say. He’d married crazily, for love. The melamed lived with DiAngelis and his wife, had retired from teaching and talked to the birds. But none of the dons dared joke about this pazzo, the dotty father-in-law. DiAngelis had survived bloody wars, he’d sat in jail. Other dons had tried to kill him. They’d blown up his car. They’d executed his chauffeurs. But DiAngelis walked out of the carnage. He killed when he had to kill, like some tycoon of the streets. LeComte had indicted him three times in the last two years. But he couldn’t seem to put Jerry away.

  Isaac stood in the fallen snow.

  Nothing seemed to move behind the green windows.

  And then DiAngelis came out with no bodyguard or winter coat. He was wearing a cardigan. He was five or six years younger than Don Isacco and he owned New York like no mayor or police chief ever could. Nothing got built, or moved, without DiAngelis. The mayor’s New York Times was delivered in one of DiAngelis’ trucks. The City would have come to a halt without Jerry DiAngelis. Isaac knew it, so did everybody but LeComte.

  Jerry was an inch taller than Isaac. He was much better tailored. He had silver hair and no bald spots. But he curtsied to the police commissioner.

  “It’s an honor, Don Isacco. Are you bringing me a message from LeComte?”

  “Come out, Jerry.”

  And Jerry DiAngelis waltzed onto the wet ground.

  “Walk with me,” Isaac said.

  DiAngelis shut the door of the rifle club. He gave no other signal than that.

  “How is your father-in-law?” Isaac asked.

  “He worries about you. You’re his favorite official. He’d heard on the news that you took a fall. He sent you flowers at the hospital, Isaac. Did you get them?”

  “Probably. But you know. Every piece of merchandise is screened before it comes into my room. Thank him for me, Jerry. I’m fond of the old man. I hear he was one hell of a melamed.”

  “Isaac, what is it you want?”

  “You have an accountant named Crabbs.”

  Jerry DiAngelis didn’t pause in the snow. “Had an accountant. He ran away from home. LeComte would love to have him in court. But honestly, Isaac, Martin Crabbs has very little to offer LeComte. I do my bookkeeping in my head.”

  “It’s not Crabbs I want. It’s his wife.”

  Jerry stopped and did a tiny dance, soiling the rich leather of his shoes. “That bimbo, Margaret, Margaret Tolstoy?”

  “She’s a woman of culture,” Isaac said.

  “Of course she is. But why bother me about her?”

  “I need her address.”

  DiAngelis started walking again. “Is that why you brought me out into the snow? You’re as crippled in the head as my father-in-law.”

  “Jerry, her address …”

  “Isaac, you have a hard-on for Margaret Tolstoy, that’s your problem. I’m not her pimp.”

  “We went to school together. She was in my class.”

  “Margaret? She can’t read English.”

  “She was in my class.”

  “When? In the dinosaur age? Isaac, I don’t get it. She lives at Thirty-nine Grand Street. Apartment eleven. Satisfied?”

  “Yes,” Isaac said. “Thanks, Jerry, I’ll return the favor.”

  And the PC started to walk. It was DiAngelis who had to call after him.

  “Return the favor right now. Tell me where you’re hiding Maurice.”

  Isaac pointed to LeComte’s panel truck. And the two men shuffled around the corner.

  “He’s a wizard, LeComte … with microphones. The British secret service taught him everything he knows.”

  “Maurice,” DiAngelis said.

  “I don’t have him, Jerry.”

  “Swear on your daughters life,” DiAngelis said.

  “I don’t want Marilyn brought into this. She’s not a soldier.”

  “Swear.”

  “She’s not a soldier, I said.”

  “It ain’t good enough, dottore. Swear.”

  Isaac knew that Jerry could reach into Seattle whenever he wanted and it wouldn’t have mattered what protection Marilyn had. But the prince of Mulberry Street didn’t go after women. He was as ruthless and old-fashioned as Isaac himself. Almost another Ivanhoe. And the PC, who wouldn’t have sworn on Marilyn’s life to any other man, satisfied Jerry.

  “I swear,” he said.

  “Then who the fuck has Maurice?”

  “LeComte. That
’s my guess. He’s squeezing your counselor.”

  “Maurie can’t testify against me in court.”

  “He doesn’t have to. Maurie can point LeComte in the right direction, like a Seeing Eye dog.”

  “And LeComte can have me sit in the can while his prosecutors work up one more phony case … but it’s not like Maurie to sing, even if he is a faigele. I’ve been careful about the boyfriends, Isaac. I always check them out.”

  “Maurie doesn’t have to sing,” Isaac said. “All he has to do is disappear. LeComte figures you’ll fold in court if Maurie isn’t around.”

  “LeComte isn’t alone in this. He likes to borrow your boys.”

  “I’m the police commissioner, Jerry. I don’t buy and sell shirts.”

  “Does LeComte know I helped you capture Henry Armstrong Lee?”

  “It wouldn’t score points with him. He’s pissed off that his own children didn’t make the collar.”

  Justice had all the money in the world, but it couldn’t understand the ways of New York. DiAngelis stole, cheated, killed, but he only killed his people. He was the best informant Isaac ever had. If a slasher was on the loose, or a black bank robber like Henry Lee, it was DiAngelis who pumped the streets, DiAngelis who found the leads, because the prince preferred a city without chaos. He was a crime boss, and Isaac’s squads had him under surveillance, bugged his offices, his clubs, his mistress’ rooms with sound buttons that LeComte supplied, microphones that could curl inside a pin. But Isaac left him alone. If Jerry was destroyed, Isaac would have to deal with another boss who might not be so reliable, and could start some senseless war where little old ladies would get killed.

  Isaac said good-bye to the prince as the snow gathered between them. They didn’t embrace, like comrades would. They didn’t touch, or even smile. DiAngelis returned to his rifle club. And Isaac tracked in the snow to Grand Street. He didn’t care who was behind him, technicians who sat in trucks with cameras that could shoot right through a wall.

  Thirty-nine Grand Street was attached to a shop that sold bridal gowns. The brides in the windows had burnt-red skin. The gowns were lavish, with long lace sleeves. Isaac had to stop and look, even though he had other business. The mannequins unsettled him. They were like no other dolls Isaac had ever seen. The dollmaker had endowed them with perfectly flowing arms under all that red skin. Isaac envied their lyrical lines. The dolls were as monstrous as any human.