He’d never been religious. But Isaac wished he could enter some little shul, cover his balding skull with a prayer shawl, and sing his way to God. But there was no such shul, except perhaps in the dream world of Transnistria, and Isaac didn’t have a magic glass that could bring back Russian Roumania. But he’d have to do something about the kid.
He could feel a man behind him. Isaac was always allergic to shadows that crept along his back. He ducked into a store and came barreling out at Burton Bortelsman. “Damn you, Burt, You shouldn’t trail me like that.”
“Isaac, I read you the signal, Friar Tuck, and you hung up on me.”
“That’s because I had things on my mind.”
“Well, I thought you might have been hurt. Besides, what’s the good of exiling the Ivanhoes to Swan Lake? We can’t track the Russians or the Saudis and the French.”
“There are more important things than the Russians and the Saudis.”
“Like what?”
“Sal Rubino and his little tribe of captains.”
The Afrikaner laughed. “You’d like a little wet work on Sal?”
“I’m not an executioner. I’d like to hurt him in his pocketbook, cripple Sal’s loan-sharking operation. But it has to be done with finesse. And be careful about Margaret Tolstoy. I don’t want her touched.”
“I’ll be kind to the princess,” Burt said. “Did you ever discover her pedigree … before she got to Manhattan as Margaret Tolstoy?”
“Didn’t I tell you? She’s LeComte’s prize package. Busting up gangs for him from Florida to Seattle.”
“And how did he inherit the package?”
“From the Bureau, via the KGB.”
“Interesting,” Burt said. “And I suppose with her dark eyes she was some sort of a swallow.”
“She had plenty of experiences before she ever got to a KGB kindergarten. She was the child mistress of a crazy man, Ferdinand Antonescu. They had a long honeymoon in Odessa during the war.”
“Sounds a bit farfetched. Do you think Moscow embroidered the tale? Careful, Isaac. The princess could still be KGB.”
“That’s why I sent you to the Catskills in the first place. But never mind Margaret. I want Sal’s ass. Nothing rough, Burt. No beatings. No bombs. Just steal his money however you can. I’d like him to be a pauper by the end of the month.”
“Relax. We’ll mortgage the man. But our lads need a new base. We can’t accomplish much from that white hotel of yours.”
“Use one of our warehouses. But when you’re done with Sal you’ll have to go back to Swan Lake.”
“Bloody exile,” Burt said, and wandered off. And Isaac walked to One Police Plaza. He could feel a chill on the commissioners’ floor, as if he’d already become a pariah. His desk was clean. He had one or two papers to sign. His sergeants and his secretaries were polite, but he could have been inside a leper colony. His trials commissioner had canceled lunch. Sweets was out in the field. And Isaac had the dreaded stink of Internal Affairs about him. He was a PC under suspicion, and whoever got close to Isaac ran the risk of being tainted by him. Becky’s people had boxed him out of his own Department. He could have raged, fought back, got himself a bloody lawyer. But he was sick of intrigues. His driver, Sergeant Malone, brought him a sandwich. Malone had this stubborn loyalty of the Irish. He was an old-line cop, a relic from Centre Street, where the Commish had a private gold elevator and functioned under a nest of chandeliers.
“Isaac,” Malone said, “there’s a lot of Judases in town. And some of them are right on this floor.”
“I know.”
“I spit on the bastards. I was there when they took Tiger John out of this very room, led him to the hall in handcuffs. It was no proper way to treat the Commish. You can’t outrun these jackals, Isaac. What is it you intend to do?”
“Nothing.”
“Then flee from here, for Christ’s sake.”
“I’m not a hider, like Maurie Goodstein.”
“It’s not Maurie I care about,” Malone said. “These lawyers, Isaac, they have their own little league. But you’re fair game for any prosecutor who’d like to build himself a reputation…. Isaac, I’ve been with the Department thirty-eight years. I’ve seen them rise and fall. And you’re a falling man.”
He went up to the Christys to peek at pictures on the wall. Home Run Baker. Heinie Zimmerman. And the Big Train, Walter Johnson. It was a liturgy he liked to think about. Those little lost gods of baseball. Who would ever worship Heinie Zimmerman after the arrival of Babe Ruth? No one but the Christys themselves.
He sat on a leather chair in the lounge. And while Isaac meditated, the Bomber appeared with his big hands.
“Isaac, come with me.”
“I’m tired, Harry. I think I’ll rest. It’s peaceful here at the club. I can dream of my old favorites. Remember that one-armed bandit the Brownies brought up from the Memphis Chicks in ’forty-five? Pete Gray. Everybody called it a stunt. The Brownies needed a lift, they said. But I saw him, Harry. He moved like a magician. He could catch the ball, slide the glove off his hand, and throw bullets to the infield in one fucking motion.”
“Isaac, Schyler wants to see you.”
“You mean the president who disappeared from his own club?”
“Cut the comedy. I could smash you one.”
“But I’m a guest, Harry, sitting in the lounge, minding my own business. I could complain to the steward of the club.”
“I am the steward. I always was.”
Isaac got up from his chair and followed the Bomber out of the Christy Mathewson Club. Harry had his own car. And Isaac wondered where the Bomber would take him. “Aren’t you going to blindfold me?”
“No. But you can sit on the backseat. This is strictly a chauffeuring job.”
Isaac climbed into the car. He could see the hairs on the Bomber’s neck, the slightly wilted collar of his old hero who’d jumped to the Mexican League and left the Giants in last place.
“Harry, what was it like? Playing with Veracruz.”
The hairs seemed to knot on the Bomber’s neck. He wouldn’t answer the PC. And Isaac couldn’t unravel the Bomber’s route. He was driving in a semicircle, passing the very same streets.
“Commissioner,” he finally said. “It was baseball and there would have been no room for me on the Giants in ’forty-six. All the team’s soldiers were coming back. I would have had a long sleep on the bench.”
“Harry, how do you know that?”
The Bomber tilted his head. “Isaac, I was a war baby. Couldn’t you tell? So I jumped to Veracruz. It wasn’t for the extra cash. There were fires in the bleachers during every game. I couldn’t eat the food. I’d get the shits. I found a woman. I married her. I played.”
“El béisbal mexicano.”
“My eyes went bad. I had a kid with my mujer. A girl. She caught the measles. And then she died. I could still hit the long ball. But grounders would go right through my legs. I began crashing into the fences. I wore specs in the outfield. I was an old man at twenty-nine. The mujer stayed in Mexico. And I ran home to New York.… Isaac, don’t fuck my head with your dreams.”
“I’m sorry. I loved you in the outfield, that’s all.”
“Then love me a little less.”
“I can’t,” Isaac said. “It’s not in my nature.”
The Bomber parked two blocks behind the Christy Mathewson Club. Both of them got out of the car. “You never moved Maurie, did you? He’s in some secret closet at the club.”
“You’ll find out,” the Bomber said.
They returned to the Christy Mathewson Club via the roofs. They stood on the club’s roof deck for five minutes until the Bomber felt it was safe. He smoked a cigarette, rocked along the roof’s little gutter, and surveyed the streets. Isaac didn’t care what the Bomber said about being a grandpa at twenty-nine. He still had the lithe walk of an outfielder in the Mexican League.
He knocked on the roof’s narrow door. “Schyler, it’s the Bo
mber and Isaac Sidel.”
The door opened. The Bomber disappeared first. And then Isaac descended into the dark. He was the dummy of all time. Isaac should have listened harder to that male nurse. The nurse visited Maurie at the club because that’s where Maurie was staying. And all the nonsense about coded pictures on the Christys’ wall was a game to throw Isaac off the mark. If Allan Locksley “broke” the Christys’ code, it was a code that Schyler wanted him to break. What had the message been? Crash Landing. Isaac was the only one who’d crashed.
He found himself in some old forgotten maid’s room deep within the well of the roof. Schyler Knott was leaning against the wall. He wore his Christy Mathewson blazer, dark blue, with the golden emblem of a fielder’s mitt above his heart.
“Where’s Maurie?” Isaac growled.
“In good time, Isaac.”
“I took you for granted, Schyler. That was my mistake. And no one really tried to strangle you. You invented that story.”
“Not at all. It was true.”
“But I didn’t breathe a word to anyone about your connection with Maurice.”
“Except your silly Ivanhoes … but it doesn’t matter. I don’t think you sent the strangler. That was a Jerry DiAngelis job.”
“But Maurie is the only ace DiAngelis has. He can’t go to court without him.”
“Yes he can. But he’d rather not go to court at all. And he might not have to … if Maurie stays underground.”
Isaac grinned. “Underground in the Christys’ roof.”
“I forgot. You’re the singing policeman. So goddamn clever. Maurie is underground. This roof is as much a grave as anywhere else.”
“Then why did you send for me if I’m such a cow?”
“Isaac, I have the Bomber and a few old men. That’s not much of a network. And I wanted you to see Maurice. He’s suicidal. If I bring him to a convalescent home, LeComte will find out no matter what name I pick for Maurice. He’s frightened of LeComte. He thinks the FBI is listening to his brain waves.”
“What can I do?”
“I’m not sure. But you’re the only one he isn’t paranoid about. And I know the trouble you’re in. You might even have less of a future than Maurice. Somehow that consoles me. I don’t think you’ll sell us out … come on. I’ll take you to Maurie.”
They crept out of that maid’s room and into another, which was overheated and had a tiny dormer window covered from the inside with a metal grille. Maurie Goodstein sat in a child’s rocking chair, its slats painted red. He wore trousers and an undershirt. He had no shoes. One of the Christys guarded him, an old man in the club’s blazer. The old man left the room when Schyler and Isaac arrived.
Maurie didn’t rock in his chair. He looked at Isaac and dribbled onto his undershirt. But his lawyer’s eyes were as keen as they’d ever been. “They’ll crucify you, you poor stupid bastard,” he said.
“Happens all the time. My predecessor is sitting in Green Haven.”
“Your predecessor was a thief.”
“But you would have gotten him off, Maurie.”
“Not a chance. You know what they call you at Justice? Ivanhoe. Which means schmuck in their language. You’re the crusader man. Always crashing into windmills. Isaac Sidel wants to save the public schools, become the new chancellor. No one gives a shit about the schools. All they do at the Board of Ed is slide memos back and forth. But Ivanhoe wants to get in there. I wish you did. They’d bury you under a wall of paper.”
“No they wouldn’t,” Isaac said. “And Maurie, you care as much about the schools as I do, even if most of your clients are scumbags. Why did you ask for me?”
“Because I’m dying,” he said, and he began to rock in his tiny chair. “Isaac, I took from the till. I set up phony companies and accounts for Jerry DiAngelis and walked away with barrels of cash. I arranged hits.”
“Was it pressure from Jerry or the melamed?”
“No, no. Once in my life I wanted to be Jesse James. Jewish boy from Park Avenue joins the mob. I’d waltz into court, the matador himself, and between cases I’d snort coke.”
“What’s that got to do with dying?”
“It’s the Bureau. They’re rotting my brain. They’ve got the machinery, Isaac. Tell LeComte to call it off.”
“If they know where you are, Maurie, why don’t they haul you in and indict your ass?”
“It’s easier this way. Less publicity.”
“Then why bother to hide?”
“Because I’m Maurie Goodstein. My father was a judge. I’d embarrass the cocksuckers in open court.”
“But why would LeComte bother listening to Ivanhoe?”
“He likes you. You’re his Hamilton Fellow. You captured Henry Lee.”
Maurie rocked faster and faster and started to cry. Schyler had to hold the rocking chair. “It’s all right, Maurice.”
“I’ve been constipated for weeks,” Maurie said. “I’m too scared to shit. My stools are radioactive. The Bureau can turn them into bombs.”
Schyler called back Maurice’s guardian and then walked with Isaac deeper into the well and climbed down to the top floor of the club. And suddenly Isaac was in the land of people, with guest rooms and a gallery of photographs on the wall.
“You can’t closet him forever,” Isaac said. “He’ll go out of his mind. Make a deal with LeComte.”
“If we went public, DiAngelis would wipe out the Christys, one by one.”
“Then what would you like me to do? I’m the Commish. At least for a little while.”
“I just wanted you to see him, Isaac, that’s all. I think you can solve how to get to the street from here. And I wouldn’t try the roof on your own. You might slip. And I’d feel responsible. Good-bye, Isaac.”
The PC went down the winding stairs. He still couldn’t figure this fucking case. He met the Bomber in the lounge. Perhaps Isaac was wrong about Harry. Veracruz might have been a better place than the Polo Grounds. The Bomber had done his military service in the Mexican League.
Isaac went home. His door was unlocked. He walked in gently, gently, wondering who might have set him up for a kill. He heard noises from the kitchen. Fucking amateurs.
He picked up a piece of vacuum-cleaner pipe from the hall closet. He held the pipe in his hand. Had Sal Rubino’s little soldiers come to haunt him? The Commish wasn’t going to evaporate without a fight. He entered the kitchen and saw a ghost. It was the bicycle boy, the geep who’d shot the melamed. But he didn’t have wire around his neck. He was drinking a glass of milk from Isaac’s fridge.
“Hello, grandpa.”
Isaac blushed.
18
Captain Cole, that chief of detectives from St. Louis, was standing behind the kitchen door like a wanton bear, digging into a box of Rice Krispies.
“Glad you’re enjoying my house, Loren. How the hell did you get in?”
“Sorry, Isaac. I’d have called first, but it ain’t regular police business. I had to come on the sly.”
“I asked you how you got in. That door is supposed to be pickproof.”
“Some locksmith’s been handing you a lot of lies.”
“Show me your picks,” Isaac said.
Loren removed a chamois cloth from his pocket. The cloth held a series of long silver needles, the finest picks Isaac had ever seen.
“I copped them off a second-story man. Are you satisfied?”
“And how’s Mr. McCardle?”
“Ask him yourself,” Loren said.
“I don’t need asking,” Kingsley McCardle said. “I’m doing fine, grandpa. They sure don’t take care of police chiefs in New York. This is a dump.”
“Then you can stop drinking my milk.”
“Aw, he didn’t mean nothing. He’s excited about being away from St. Louis. He’s been living in that children’s shelter half his life.”
“I thought you were pretty content about leaving him in there.”
“I was … until last night. We got a court
order to give the boy up. One of my own people served the papers. They’re figuring to get Kingsley on a manslaughter rap. Not while I’m alive.”
“But it doesn’t make sense. You hid him all these years. And now the courts wake up and find Kingsley McCardle.”
“Don’t ponder it, Isaac. It’s one of them twists of fate. But I’d like to leave him with you for a while. I have to get back to St. Louis.”
Loren winked at the boy, one hand still inside the Rice Krispies. “I’ll miss my plane,” he said. “Now you be good, Kingsley, and listen to the man.”
“I’ll get along with grandpa,” Kingsley said.
Captain Cole started out the door with the Rice Krispies. Then he turned to Isaac. “Didn’t mean to swipe your breakfast cereal.”
“That’s all right. You’ll have something to munch on at the airport.”
“And do me a kindness, Isaac. Don’t call me at headquarters. I’ll be in touch.”
It was peculiar having someone live with him in the same house. He’d been a bachelor husband so long, without his daughter and Kathleen. Isaac didn’t quite know how to move with Kingsley McCardle around him. But the boy seemed to navigate with his own invisible rudder in Isaac’s rooms. He was never in the john when Isaac needed it. He didn’t monopolize the fridge. He washed whatever plates he used. He got rid of the garbage. He’d arrived with toothpaste and dental floss in his pocket and a package of twenty-dollar bills.
“Is that some kind of allowance?” Isaac asked.
“No. It’s my dowry.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The captain gave it to me for working my butt off in that orphans’ asylum.”
“Should I open a bank account for you?”
“I don’t trust banks,” the boy said.
The Good Policeman (The Isaac Sidel Novels) Page 14
