“Who’s Christy Mathewson?” the Nose asked.
“A pitcher with the New York Giants,” Crabbs said. “Won thirty-seven games in Nineteen hundred and eight.”
“I wasn’t around in Nineteen hundred and eight,” Nose said. “And baseball isn’t my business.”
“You see,” Crabbs said. “He’s clear on that subject.”
“And what about you?”
The accountant emerged from beneath the blanket. “Me?”
“Yes. Maybe you and Schyler disappeared for the same reason.”
“And what’s that?”
“Maurice Goodstein … of the Christy Mathewson Club.”
“I wasn’t close with Maurice.”
“You were close enough. Tell me, who got you the job as Jerry’s accountant? You’re a lone wolf. You don’t have the backing of a big firm. You’re not associated with companies that could hide Jerry’s assets … who got you the job?”
“Maurice. We knew each other from the club. He recommended me … and set up the meet with Jerry.”
“And that’s how you found Margaret Tolstoy.”
“I already told you. Jerry introduced us.”
“Gave her to you. Like some exotic bird … a Roumanian princess.”
“A princess who was born in the street.”
Isaac’s eyes turned to beads in the dark well under the Gardenia’s roof. He could have been some grand inquisitor from another time, long before white hotels arrived on Swan Lake. “Where’s Maurice?”
The accountant tried to duck under the blanket, but Isaac wouldn’t let him. “Where’s Maurice? Are the Christys holding him?”
“I think so. Look, I’m not part of the inner circle. Schyler would never trust me.”
“You’re not even the club’s accountant. Yet Maurice recommends you to Jerry. And you both disappear at the same time. Do the Christys have their own haunted hotel?”
“They might. How should I know what’s in Schyler’s head?”
“But Maurice isn’t like you. It would take an awful lot to get him to run. Maurice rolls over everybody, like a fucking tank.”
“But LeComte changed the complexion. It’s spooky out there. Jerry’s gang is split. LeComte creates his own battle circus. He’s FBI, CIA, Treasury, you name it. He has secret services coming out of his ass. Nobody can win. It’s not one agency, Commissioner. It’s the whole United States. LeComte proves the existence of a crime family in court, and Maurice can’t separate himself. He’s part of that family. The money he collects from Jerry is tainted, like Jerry himself. He had no options, Commissioner. He had to run … or join LeComte. Maurice is no joiner. And neither am I.”
“So you’ll sit here in your white hotel and wait for what?”
“Until LeComte finds another hobby. Or gets sick of chasing Jerry DiAngelis and decides to run for secretary of state.”
“That’s not an elective office,” Isaac said.
“With LeComte it is.”
Isaac couldn’t argue with the accountant. He left Crabbs in his tiny kingdom on Swan lake. The worm in Isaac’s gut told him Crabbs didn’t have much longer to live. One gang would get him, and it didn’t matter which. The wind blew off the ice. And the lake howled at Isaac as he climbed down the hill with Teddy Boy. Isaac couldn’t see a star in that Catskill sky. Just a piece of the moon like some crescent in an endless flag. Nose tried to lure him into a conversation, but Isaac walked ahead. The stars had abandoned the Borscht Belt. And nothing in the world could bring back Brazilian Night in the big casino, when Isaac had danced the samba, wearing a white tux, with the sweat of the kitchen behind his ears, and the dream of connecting with some doctor’s daughter, preferably a Stalinist like himself.
9
Isaac returned to his Ivanhoes. It was three in the morning, and fresh snow had begun to fall. He loved the winters, even though his flat on Rivington Street was like Little Siberia. The wind would howl across the rooms and leave Isaac in a deep shiver. But he was at the shirt factory now. Locksley, the Greek and Latin prof, was acting as some kind of duty officer, and Isaac didn’t have to wake him. The other Ivanhoes slept in their cots.
“Allan,” Isaac said, “how did it go at the Christys? Did you make any sense out of the portraits on the wall? … Well, did you decode them or not? You’re dealing with amateurs, for Christ’s sake.”
“That’s what makes it doubly difficult,” Locksley said.
“So you couldn’t read their traffic.”
“Didn’t say that. But it took a little doing.” And Locksley held out a tiny memo pad with a green cover. “We broke into the place and found this in one of Schyler Knott’s back drawers. It was sloppy of him, if you ask me.”
“What is it?”
“Schyler’s codebook.”
“All right, Allan, tell me the grift.”
“It’s an x plus y plus one affair. Like a recurring melody. A constellation almost. Schyler invents his own alphabet. Nothing to do with the names themselves. That would be too modest. Schyler’s in love with birthdays. Look at Babe Ruth. Born February sixth, Eighteen hundred and—”
“I don’t want the whole megillah. The message, Allan, what’s the message you caught last night?”
“From the birthdays of the men on the wall?”
“Yes, Allan. Do I have to rock you like a child? Give me the fucking message, will you, please?”
“Well, each birthday has its own shorthand.”
“I trust you, Allan. You’re a Houdini with a codebook.”
“Crash Landing.”
“What the hell does it mean?”
“I’d say they’re moving Maurice. And they’re in an awful rush.”
“But it’s speculation. It could mean almost anything. And suppose Schyler planted the notebook for us to find.”
“I doubt that, Isaac. It’s too detailed.”
“But he could still be having fun at our expense. Where’s Margaret Tolstoy?”
“She fled the coop while I was with the Christys.”
“You left her all alone?”
“Isaac, she had six Ivanhoes as her baby-sitters.”
“But I told you not to leave her until Burt got back.”
“He did get back, but he had to go out again.… Isaac, there was nothing we could do. We’re not her jailors. The princess said she had to go to the toilet.”
“Princess?” Isaac muttered, his eyes like bones in his head.
“Isaac, you called her Anastasia. And I’m a cryptologist. I’m always searching for names in the dark.”
“So she waltzed into the toilet and disappeared on you. My champions. My best fucking men.”
“Oh, we could have shackled her, but that’s not the message we got. A friend of yours from way, way back. Looking for a bit of sanctuary, which we supplied.”
The phone rang, and Isaac’s deepest wish was that Anastasia was on the line, ready to purr for Isaac and say she was a naughty girl who’d gone out for a ham sandwich in the middle of the night. But the factory was stocked with ham and all the bread Anastasia could eat. It was Burt, calling from a public phone.
“We found the faigele,” he said. Burt had to repeat himself because Isaac was still dreaming of his Roumanian princess. “Isaac, the male nurse. Maurice’s boyfriend. We’re holding him for you. At the candy store.”
It was one of Isaac’s safe houses, like the shirt factory. Isaac had them all over town. The candy store was a cellar in the East Village, across from a Ukrainian cathedral. He took a cab to the church, waited, waited, then ducked into the cellar like the police chief he was, his nostrils flaring. He knocked once on the cellar door and listened for Burt’s growl. “Who is it?”
“Brian de Bois-Guilbert.”
The door opened, and Burt stood in a doctor’s gown.
“Jesus,” Isaac said, “did you kidnap the poor bastard?”
“We bloody well did.”
“Played the doctor and stole him from where?”
“St. Jude. It’s a nursing home at the upper end of the island. Run by the Catholic Charities, I think. Anyway, we had to swindle him past a couple of priests.”
“Does he know who we are?”
“Not yet, Isaac. I didn’t know how you wanted to play it. But the lad is scared. I planted a little light bulb in his head, told him he might not survive the night.”
Isaac reached for his putty nose and then returned it to his pocket. “What’s his name?”
“Jaime Cortez. A real Latin beauty, with eyelashes like a little girl.”
Isaac followed Burt into the depths of the candy store. Jaime Cortez sat in a simple chair. He did have a gorgeous face, like a slightly brutal choirboy who’d grown too big for his pants.
“Jaime,” Isaac said, “do you know who I am?”
“Yes,” the boy said. He couldn’t have been more than nineteen or twenty. “The big policeman.”
“Then you’ll understand that we don’t wish Maurice any harm. We just want to communicate with him. Do you believe me?”
“No. You have too many ballbusters, like this one. He shouldn’t have been so rough with me.”
“Ah, but you wouldn’t have come along, Jaime, if he asked you in a quiet way.”
“It doesn’t matter. The big policeman is supposed to be on our side.”
“I am, Jaime.”
“Then why you let him steal me, huh? You come to St. Jude’s. I talk. I fix some cocoa. I make it with hot milk.”
“But the news might have leaked. It wouldn’t have been kosher for Maurice. Other people might have come, bad people.”
“He’s bad,” Jaime said, pointing to Burt.
Burton sighed. “Isaac, are you going to let him pussy around?”
“Shhh,” Isaac said, kneeling in front of the nurse. “Jaime, we want to help. But we can’t without you. Has Maurice been in touch?”
“Yes.”
“Why did he vanish?”
Jaime smiled. “He don’t vanish from me, Mr. Isaac. He calls. We meet. We make love. He bought me a wedding ring, but I don’t wear it at Jude’s. The fathers wouldn’t like it. I’m a good nurse.”
“And where do you meet?”
“In safe houses,” Jaime said with a luster in his eyes that diminished Isaac and all his Ivanhoes. “Once he took me to the club.”
“What kind of club?”
Jaime clamped one fist over the other, as if he were clutching a baseball bat.
“He brought you to the Christys?”
“We went upstairs,” Jaime said. “We danced. We had chicken and cherry pie. We took a shower.”
“Lord,” Burt said with a bitter face. “Do we have to listen to the details? Isaac, are you going to crack his skull or do I have to? … Bloody fuckin’ faigel. Dancing with Maurice like a regular bride. It’s enough to make me puke.”
“Shut up, Burt.”
“I will not. Sack me, Isaac. But I found the faigel. And you bloody well bleed what you can out of him. Because he’s talking rot.”
“Wait for me outside, Burt. Thank you.”
“I do the dirty work. I steal the sod. And then I’m punished for it.”
“Burt.”
“All right. But if he’s not a good canary, boss, beat him around the ears. Then he’ll talk. Wouldn’t want a child of mine around a yob like that.”
“You don’t have a child,” Isaac said.
“That’s immaterial. It’s the principle of the thing.”
And Burt walked out of the candy store.
“Dance with me,” Jaime said.
“But there’s no music …”
“Dance with me.”
“I wouldn’t know how,” Isaac said. Jaime stood up and Isaac danced him around the store. It was an odd sensation, because in Isaac’s arms Jaime could have been a girl. The PC had Margaret on his mind.
Jaime sat down again.
“He says no one can help him. Not you, Mr. Isaac. Not Jerry DiAngelis. He’s running from the Devil.”
“Is the Devil’s name LeComte?”
“Maurie didn’t say. The Devil, that’s all.”
Isaac let Jaime go back to St. Jude’s. But he couldn’t find Burt outside the candy store. He looked across the street. The commandant of the Ivanhoes was sitting on the steps of the Ukrainian cathedral, sitting in the snow, as forlorn as some forgotten gargoyle out of Isaac’s past.
“You jeopardize us, Isaac, give our positions away, and we don’t even nab Maurice.”
“Did you see Margaret Tolstoy at the factory?”
“I did not. I was having a busy night … acquiring the nurse.”
“I’d like you to go to Swan Lake. Margaret’s husband is hiding out in a white hotel that looks like a Southern mansion. You can’t miss it.”
“Where the hell is Swan Lake?”
“In the Catskills, Burt. I guess they didn’t have a Borscht Belt in Capetown.”
“You’re bloody right. And what am I supposed to do with the man? Be his baby-sitter?”
“Yes. He doesn’t have much of a future. I’d like to keep him alive if we can. Take two of our boys, Burt. Just in case.”
“Who’s after the bugger?”
“I’d say jerry’s rivals, but I’m not sure.”
“The old Rubino bunch?”
“It’s my guess they’re being financed by the other Families … or else they’re free-lancing and they’d like to capture Jerry’s bookkeeper, squeeze him as hard as they can, and kill him.”
“Rubino’s captains? They’re ragtailers. Jerry could squash them like a bug.”
“Not if they’ve been given a boost.”
“Angel on my shoulder, is that it? The great white father LeComte? Meddling as always. Playing half the gang against the other, so he can put brother Jerry into the pen. Plucky bastard, ain’t he? Our nominal leader, crown prince of the Ivanhoes. Wish we could survive without his cash.”
“That’s easy enough,” Isaac said. “Mount a commando operation and rob a couple of banks.”
“We’d be better off in the long run,” Burt said.
“I agree. But it’s the short run I worry about. Ride up to Swan Lake, will you? And hold that accountant’s hand.”
Burt got up from the steps of the cathedral and shoved off into the snow. Isaac kept looking for him, but the Afrikaner was invisible after thirty yards. Mandrake the Magician. The PC had idolized him as a boy. Mandrake could conjure up warm-bodied ghosts and have them melt into snow. He was in love with Princess Narda. He wore a top hat and a cape, even when he was stuck in some bayou. And he had Lothar, the big black giant in a fez. Mandrake and Isaac had their princesses, but Narda was a little more reliable.
The PC got to Rivington Street, hoping Anastasia would be outside his door. But he had nothing but the worm and the thick beat of his own black heart. He wasn’t Mandrake. He fell asleep in all his sloppy clothes.
10
Isaac had to rise at six. He was touring the City’s schools. He didn’t have a proper invitation from the Board of Ed. The PC had invited himself. He was feuding with the chancellor, Alejo Tomás, an hombre who was tied to the Democratic machine. Tomás had prettied up all the dropout reports. He prattled about innovations. He juggled the schools’ reading scores so that illiteracy was one more pink elephant. He talked of computers in kindergarten classes and of preschool programs that existed only on paper. Tomás couldn’t control the unions, the teachers, or the schools. Prostitution flourished among twelve-year-old girls. Fourteen-year-old kids ran dope rings. There were thirteen-year-old expectant mothers in Alejo’s school system. Janitors were sleeping with boys and girls. One brand-new high school was sinking into the ground. Another was infested with rats. But Alejo still had his chancellor’s chair. And Isaac was determined to push him out.
His chauffeur, Sergeant Malone, arrived at seven. They had coffee together in Isaac’s tiny kitchen. Isaac boiled him an egg. And Malone felt sorry for the PC, who lived worse than any rookie
cop, with a tub in his kitchen and a dining room without windows. Where does his pay go? the sergeant wondered. Does he squander it on society gals or medicines that put his worm to sleep? He’d gotten his own “angel” killed, Manfred Coen, who had the misfortune of attracting Isaac’s daughter to himself. But you couldn’t talk about Coen to the Commish. Isaac’s worm was attached to Coen’s death in ways the sergeant couldn’t quite comprehend. Isaac had been dueling with a family of pimps. He went underground, lived with the pimps in their candy store. And the pimps, who’d grown up with Manfred in some miserable sector of the Bronx, had given Isaac the worm. But it wasn’t a tale that one even whispered about, because that worm had a secret sense. The worm was like fucking radar on anything to do with Coen. Let the spirits lie low, the sergeant liked to say. Best not to get too close to this Commish, or the daughter might arrive, and then where would you be?
“Did you bring your tux?” Isaac asked.
“That I did.”
And it was another wondrous thing to Sergeant Malone. The police commissioner of the City of New York borrowing a tuxedo from his chauffeur for the Governor’s Manhattan Ball. Their build was the same, that was true. The tux had belonged to Malone’s dad, and his dad before him, in County Clare. And Malone himself had worn that tux to a hundred weddings and wakes and meetings of the Shamrock Society. The crotch had tightened after all those years. The cummerbund was a bit too shiny. A shoulder sagged. But Isaac, who’d seen Malone in the monkey suit, had insisted on wearing it to the Ball. “Should I bring it up right now, Chief? Will only take a minute. You can try it on. And if there’s a problem, well, the missus can always mend it. She’s a bit of a tailor, you know. Always was.”
Isaac shrugged. “There’s plenty of time.”
And there was no way to hazard a guess what the PC was thinking about. Sly lad he was. Sherlock Holmes without the violin. And suppose he was a sheeny. He’d stood for the Irish at One Police Plaza, addressed the Shamrock Society, done honor to the lads, even though he had a nigger First Dep. The Irish had owned the Department under the former PC, Tiger John Rathgar, but Tiger John was sitting in a cell at Green Haven, a bloody thief, and a shame to all his countrymen. It was Isaac who’d been his First Dep, tutored and suckled by the lads themselves, accepted into the fold, sheeny as he was, because he had a drop of the old blarney in him and had taught himself to speak with a bit of a brogue. Now another sheeny sat in City Hall, Rebecca Karp, and the Irish were being pushed out of office. No matter. Malone was secure around Isaac the Brave. Isaac wouldn’t desert the brethren. But he was the Last of the Mohicans because as sure as piss, Mr. Sweets would be the next PC.
The Good Policeman (The Isaac Sidel Novels) Page 8
