The First Dep screamed at Isaac in front of all his sergeants and fellow commissioners, and Isaac didn’t scream back. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“Save your apologies, Mr. Isaac. The Maf’s been partying. Jerry’s father-in-law was shot.”
“Where is he?”
“St. Vincent’s. I think he’ll pull through.”
Sergeant Malone brought Isaac out of One Police Plaza in the old Dodge, with the sirens wailing against traffic. They got to St. Vincent’s in seven minutes. Isaac blundered through the hospital, showing the stars on his commissioner’s shield. Doctors, nurses, and nuns couldn’t hold back the Commish. He found the DiAngelis brothers, Jerry and Nose, outside intensive care, with Eileen DiAngelis. Jerry had six of his own lieutenants guarding the intensive-care unit. The hospital was like an army barrack.
One of the nurses complained. “I’m going to call the police.”
“Ma’am,” Isaac said. “Forgive the intrusion. I’m Commissioner Isaac Sidel.”
“This is outrageous,” the nurse said. “These people have no business being here.”
She frowned at the gold stars on Isaac’s badge and skulked into another ward.
“I told him not to go walking by himself,” Jerry muttered. “Jesus, this isn’t a country club. They send a kid, some geep with a toy gun to shoot Izzy. Isaac, he looked like a messenger boy. He was riding a bike … but this is the end. Sal Rubino, I’m taking out that son of a bitch.”
Eileen stood in the corner and started to cry. Isaac looked at the Nose.
“Ah,” Teddy Boy said, “you don’t touch a melamed. He’s sacred. Like Cardinal Jim.”
A doctor came out of the unit. “Is Commissioner Sidel here?”
“Yes,” Isaac said. “That’s me.”
“Mr. Wasser would like to see you.”
“Doc,” Jerry asked, “how is my father-in-law?”
“He’ll be fine,” the doctor said. “But he wants to talk with Mr. Sidel.”
And Isaac passed through the magical door of the intensive-care unit. Men and women were lying in criblike beds, comatose after surgery. But the melamed had his own curtained-off corner. Isaac went inside the curtain. It could have been Ali Baba’s tent. The melamed had tubes in his arms, but he was as conscious as Isaac would ever be.
“Izzy,” Isaac said. “I’m glad you’re alive.”
The melamed motioned to Isaac with a finger. And Isaac approached the crib. “Tell you a secret,” Izzy whispered. “So am I. But I’m superstitious. I don’t like rooms with crosses on every wall.”
“It’s a Catholic hospital, for God’s sake. Be a little kind. Your daughter married a Catholic.”
“That’s different,’ the melamed said. “Speak to Jerry, Isaac. Please. If he declares war on Sal, nobody wins.”
“I’ll take care of Sal Rubino.”
“Shh,” the melamed said. “You’re the chief of police. But promise me, Isaac. You’ll talk to Jerry. He’s not to move a finger until I’m out of St. Vincent’s. They were trying to humiliate us, that’s all. So they sent a child on a bicycle.”
“I don’t agree, Iz. It was clever of Sal. A kid wouldn’t arouse suspicion. A kid could come through the lines.”
“But he had a peashooter. If I hadn’t fallen down, I could have recovered at home. No, no, Isaac. It wasn’t meant to be a kill. It was a message. ‘Dear Jerry. A little present from your own captains. Happy Valentine.’”
“But we’re in January, Iz.”
“So what? Sal Rubino likes to celebrate as early as he can. Now get out of here. I’m an old man. I need time to recuperate.”
15
He went down to St. Andrews Plaza, where LeComte kept an office in the same building as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District. Isaac had no idea if LeComte was around. The son of a bitch could be off playing golf with the attorney general in the fields of Virginia, or having a late, late breakfast on Capitol Hill. He had a flat in Georgetown and a pied-a-terre in Manhattan that was bigger than Isaacs whole apartment. But LeComte must have canceled his golf game. Isaac found him in his office. His sleeves were rolled up.
Isaac saw the ripple of his forearms. “Working late, aren’t you, LeComte?”
The prince regent of the Justice Department didn’t bother looking up. “Isaac, I don’t remember seeing you in my calendar book.”
“That’s because your secretary is absentminded. I’m in your book, LeComte. You just never took the time to notice. You’re the great magician. You run the whole fucking show. You invented that Alexander Hamilton business. The first Hamilton Fellow, Isaac Sidel. It was a game to get me on the road.”
“You’re wrong. I’m the last ally you have left. Becky Karp and the governor will throw you to the dogs.”
“Yes, the governor. Great man. I wonder who told him about the Ivanhoes.”
“I did. You’ve been sloppy, Isaac. Leaving trails. If I didn’t tell him, someone else at Justice would. And I’d have lost my credibility with the Gov. He’ll be our next president. You know that. He’s so narrowed down, he could never lose an election.”
“And Frederic LeComte will be his secretary of state.”
“No. I like it here at Justice. It suits my temperament.”
“Right. You can be invisible whenever you want. You can run agents like Magda Antonescu.”
LeComte rolled down his sleeves. “I’m impressed. You must have had a meet with Farouk in one of your Chinese restaurants.”
“What Farouk?”
“Your Syrian connection. We call him King Farouk. Would you like a drink?”
“No thanks. I brought my own bottle of milk.”
“For the tapeworm, isn’t it? I could recommend a miracle doctor, Isaac. He’d cure you in a month.”
“I like the worm,” Isaac said. “He’s the best companion I ever had.”
“Outside Manfred Coen.”
“Tell me, LeComte, what’s my nickname in FBI circles?”
“We’ve gotten used to calling you Isaac. You’ll always be Isaac to us … or Alec.”
Isaacs nose started to twitch. Soon the worm would gnaw at him. “Ah, Alec. For Alexander Hamilton. I ought to be flattered. But I’m slow today. What about Magda? I hear a couple of agencies call her Dracula’s Daughter.”
LeComte was silent. Then he laughed. “Farouk is better than I thought.”
Isaac looked out the window. He could see the big red monolith of Police Headquarters, the lights of Wall Street, the dark bow of the Brooklyn Bridge. But he felt wounded, and he pulled on his bottle of milk. “Magda,” he muttered. “You sent her to the Christy Mathewson Club.”
“No. She was naughty. She did that on her own.”
“But you knew about Magda and me … that I’d been in love with her all these years.”
“I suspected it, once I learned she’d been in your class. And I tried to distance you from Margaret as much as I could.”
“Tell me about her uncle Ferdinand.”
“The Butcher of Bucharest.”
“I don’t understand. He was a financier, according to King Farouk.”
“Yes, the finance minister of the Roumanian province in Odessa during World War Two. The Roumanians had a dream of their own little country, Transnistria. Ferdinand was the architect of that dream. Odessa was to be the capital. He was a clever tactician, brilliant almost, with his little country by the Black Sea. But he forgot something. Transnistria had no escape routes. It was only an island, Isaac, surrounded by a fucking continent that could never belong to his German brothers. They got to the gates of Moscow, but they could never creep in. So Ferdinand was isolated in his island country. He bled the population. He massacred gypsies and Jews. But he had very quiet evenings. He played chess with one of the local champions. He dawdled with his ‘niece,’ whom he’d brought out of Roumania. They weren’t blood relatives, Isaac. She was called Magda Antonescu, his twelve-year-old concubine.”
“You’re crazy,” Isaac said. “Magda was with m
e.”
“Not until Nineteen forty-four.… Ferdinand’s country was falling apart, so he smuggled the girl out of Odessa, got her on a hospital train. And with all the diamonds and silver he’d stolen from Jewish merchants, he bribed enough guards to send her into Sweden … and onto a mercy ship to America.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“She was in Odessa, Isaac, believe it or not.”
“And I suppose the FBI cultivated her when she got here, turned her into a teenage spy. That’s Farouk’s theory.”
“Not a spy, Isaac. But the Bureau did interview her. It was common practice. So Farouk was on the right track.”
“And then what happened?”
“Transnistria crumbles completely. The fascists are thrown out of Roumania. Carol’s son, King Michael, is now on the Russian side, a comrade of Uncle Joe. Ferdinand disappears. The poor king doesn’t even have a chance to hang the Butcher of Bucharest. And Stalin never could grab him.”
“Did he run to Argentina, like Adolf Eichmann?”
“No, Isaac. That’s the beauty of it. He continues his game of chess. But he discovers a new opening. The Ferdinand Defense. He scurries back to Bucharest under a false name. Starts a little circus.”
“And plays the magician, I suppose.”
“The magician … and the clown. And he sends for Magda after the war, posing as another relative. But it was a dumb idea. We return the little package.”
“We?” Isaac said. “You weren’t even alive in forty-six or forty-seven.”
“All right. The government, Isaac. Are you satisfied? But the Bureau knows all about Uncle Ferdinand. And the Roumanians also get smart to what’s going on. They arrest the circus master. He’s brought to trial. He blubbers on the stand. Crimes against the people. All that crap. But his blubbering can’t save him. A firing squad blows his head apart.”
“But he might have outfoxed the Roumanians in his little circus if he hadn’t sent for Magda. Why did he do it?”
“He loved her, silly. He couldn’t have lived without Magda Antonescu.”
“But she was a little girl, LeComte.”
“She wasn’t that little. And I’m not his judge. The Roumanians arrest Magda. They accuse her of crimes in Ferdinand’s country by the sea. They say that Dracula and his Daughter drank Jewish blood. They might have shot her too, if the Russians hadn’t whisked her off to Moscow. She lives with a couple of generals or admirals, I don’t know. She returns to Roumania as some kind of actress. She appears in films. Then she falls into one crack or another. And with a bit of magic from the KGB, she’s in America again. Starts seducing diplomats. But the Bureau wasn’t fucking blind. It was the same Orphan Annie, Magda Antonescu. So we turn her around—sorry, Isaac. I’m only a kid at the time. And Magda, she starts feeding her Russian masters poisoned information. She’s our own little darling of the Cold War. But I don’t think the Russians paid much attention to the babble she was bringing in.”
“But they left her in place, didn’t they?”
“That’s true.”
“And she could have been free-lancing at your expense.”
“It didn’t matter, Isaac. Whatever she got was small. And then I arrived at Justice, the Junior G-man. And I inherited this worn-out whore. I think she slept with five hundred men—officially, that is. I assume she had a private life. But she was still a looker, and I decided to go domestic with Magda Antonescu, alias Margaret Malone, alias Rita Danzig. I tossed her at a couple of gangs in Chicago. We dyed her hair red. She fell in love with one or two of the overlords. She wore a wire. We got nine or ten convictions before we pulled Rita Danzig.”
“So you went for the Big Apple. You brought her here.”
“Don’t rush me, Isaac. I like to tell my own stories. First it was Seattle. Then San Diego. Then St. Louis. And Daytona Beach.”
“You should have given her my badge, LeComte, and made her your Hamilton Fellow.”
“She didn’t need a badge. The big-time thugs were cockeyed over—”
“Dracula’s Daughter.”
“She had the touch. Ferdinand must have been a good teacher.”
Isaac considered slapping LeComte, shoving his head out the window so he could sniff the weather above St. Andrews Plaza. But it wouldn’t have changed his status with the Junior G-man. “Finally you did bring Margaret to New York. Your prosecutors couldn’t hold Jerry. The media loves a Mafia man with his own sense of style. He didn’t have the education. But he learned to talk like a duke.”
“Not on his own, Isaac,” LeComte said, his mouth turning into a twist. “He had Isadore.”
“An ex-Hebrew school teacher who was also a jailbird. He couldn’t have made a duke out of Jerry.”
“But he did. Come on, Isaac. Admit. Jerry is nothing without the melamed.”
“Maybe he is and maybe he isn’t. But you have him sewed up. His brother is your prize informant.”
“Isaac, would you count on Teddy Boy? I don’t believe half his shit. The melamed might have sent him to me.”
“I’ve thought of that,” Isaac said. “Many times. But why does Jerry DiAngelis tick you off?”
“Because the public looks at him and sees some kind of knight. He’s a scumbag, Isaac. He’s killed people.”
“I don’t care who he kills as long as he sticks to his own corner. LeComte, are you really grieving for the Rubino brothers? Let him wipe out as many of his soldiers as he wants.”
“I’m not talking about soldiers,” LeComte said. “He’s slapped innocent people who looked at him the wrong way.”
“You’d be just as paranoid if you were the chief of a crime family with captains who wanted you dead.”
The prince regent held his temples for a moment and sucked air through his nose. “You don’t get it, Isaac. For you he’s a hero of the streets. The poor kid who worked his way up in America. And it doesn’t matter how many throats he had to tear, or shopkeepers he burned out of their businesses.”
“You live in Georgetown. You come to Manhattan twice a week. The City doesn’t run without DiAngelis. Becky Karp has her billion-dollar budgets. But a school can’t get built without a nod from Jerry. He’s more honest than half the City’s inspectors, and much more direct. When you deal with Jerry, there’s no red tape.”
“Of course. It’s his kingdom, isn’t it? He’s luckier than Ferdinand Antonescu. He didn’t have to invent a phantom country. All he has to do is clip a couple of pennies off the chickens you buy at the supermarket. I’m going to nail him, Isaac, and that melamed. Because it’s the old man’s brains that keeps him from falling on his ass. And don’t you dream of fucking with me. You’re a civilian, Isaac. You can’t even make an arrest. And I have a lot more soldiers than you do.”
“Margaret Tolstoy’s the best soldier in town. She marries Jerry’s bookkeeper and the bookkeeper turns dead.”
“Crabbs?”
“He died in a white hotel. Somebody popped him with a lady’s special.”
“And you think it was Margaret, you dope. Why should she kill him when she was getting Crabbs to sing?”
“If she’s so hot, LeComte, tell her to find Maurie Goodstein. Or maybe you’d like Maurie to sit it out while Dracula’s Daughter gobbles up the whole Rubino clan. Because if Maurie surfaces, he’ll whip your ass in court. He’s done it before.”
“Not with a subpoena sitting between his tail. I can tie him to Jerry’s deals. I have the schmuck on tape. He’s going down. With Jerry and the old man. He’s part of the gang. He’ll have to turn on Jerry. He doesn’t have a choice. That’s why he’s disappeared … now I’m tired, Isaac. How can I help you?”
“You already did.”
“Can you explain that? I haven’t been to my health club for a week. I get groggy after dark.”
“I enjoyed that folk tale about Margaret in Odessa. I’d like to ask her a little more.”
“Stay away from her, Isaac.”
“Why? Because I might ruin her cou
rtship with Sal Rubino?”
“Stay away.”
“I can’t, LeComte. I can’t.”
And Isaac left LeComte’s lair at St. Andrews Plaza. The worm roiled so hard in his gut he had to stop and drink all the milk he was carrying. It couldn’t satisfy the worm. Police Headquarters was only a hop away. But Isaac trundled in the other direction, past the Roman church, past the Federal Courthouse, and onto Foley Square. There was still Christmas bunting in Thomas Paine Park, lights strung along the trees that some parkman had neglected to take down, probably for want of a ladder. Isaac himself was the January Santa Claus who’d lost the line to his own Department. He would have loved to have been a pamphleteer, like old Tom Paine. But there wasn’t much room for Tom anymore. LeComte had written his own Rights of Man. It was a fucking book of spies.
The worm ripped at Isaac. He had to rest in Tom Paine’s park. Where the hell could he find a bottle of milk?
16
Isaac started plunging in and out of restaurants. He refilled his milk bottle at the Red Dot on Park Row. The milk bottle was almost as famous as Isaac himself. It was like a gas tank he wore on his own person. And the barflies wouldn’t stop commending him on his capture of Henry Armstrong Lee. It got more and more embarrassing, but Isaac had to admit that his sitdown with Henry in an abandoned building was probably the last time he’d behaved like a cop. He hadn’t used his Ivanhoes. He’d arrived with a SWAT team and Sweets, reporters stationed around him, but the Most Wanted Man in the U.S.A. would surrender to no one but Isaac Sidel. That’s the note Henry Lee sent out of the building with a runner of his. And already the reporters had their headlines: High Noon in Harlem Heights.
Isaac handed his gun to Sweets, who began to mourn Isaac while he was still alive. “That’s a crazy man in there. We could rush him, Isaac. We have a whole tactical unit.”
“I’ll be fine.”
Was he afraid? Yes. He walked in the rubble, his feet crackling against all the broken bricks. He entered the building through a shattered window and there was Henry Lee hiding in a skirt, blouse, and wig. Isaac revealed his empty holster. “I’m not packing,” he said.
The Good Policeman (The Isaac Sidel Novels) Page 12
