The cardinal held a hand over the mouthpiece. He started to whisper and the cigarette dropped into his lap. Isaac had to beat at the ashes. “Never mind,” the cardinal said. “Isaac, I’ll have to tell a couple of fibs.”
He took his hand off the mouthpiece. “Hello, Mr. President. I’m fine.… I have a celebrity in the car. Isaac Sidel.… Indeed, the Hamilton Fellow. Well, Justice has been hampering him a bit. Seems Isaac met a boy in St. Louis at the city shelter. A darling lad. The commissioner sort of adopted him. From afar, I mean. And somehow the courts have gotten involved. They want to take him out of his home. The lad’s an orphan. He likes it where he is. And I was hoping … Yes, Mr. President. His name is Kingsley McCardle.… Of course. I know you wouldn’t want to trample on Justice.… Yes, he’s right here.”
The cardinal motioned to Isaac. “Will you take the bloody phone? The president wants a word with you.”
Isaac clutched Jim’s car phone like a cumbersome bear. He was a Democrat, reared during the reign of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and he had no love for a Republican White House. He’d guarded Richard Nixon after his fall from grace, when Nixon had a town house in New York. Isaac hadn’t believed in that brouhaha over Watergate. Presidents needed “plumbers,” like police commissioners did. But he’d never been on a direct line to the White House.
“Hello,” the president said, and the big bear was bewildered. The cardinal had to jab him in the ribs before Isaac could speak.
“Hello, Mr. President.”
“We’re proud of you, Isaac. My wife and I watched you on television when you caught Henry Lee. It was clever of him to wear a woman’s skirts. But you were magnificent.”
“Thank you, Mr. President.”
His hands were shaking, and Cardinal Jim had to return the phone to his black chauffeur.
“A darling man, the president is, wouldn’t you say so?”
“But will he—”
“Isaac, it’s done. The lad is safe. Now will you get out of here before the FBI arrests me.”
Isaac and Kingsley McCardle climbed out of the car.
“Isaac,” the cardinal asked, “how is your pension plan?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Hold on to it, son.… Good-bye, Mr. McCardle. I’ll look you up in St. Louis.”
And the Lincoln drove across the rubble of Fox Street.
Kingsley had liked that cardinal in the skullcap, but he worried for his grandpa. Isaac shouldn’t have had such a pie-face when he talked to the president.
He felt a bleakness at the airport. The arrangements had been made. The boy was flying United to St. Louis. A car service would meet his plane and return him to the shelter. And the courts would develop amnesia concerning Mr. McCardle. But Isaac didn’t really want to let go. He’d learned to admire Kingsley’s neckerchief. He loved having breakfast with him, and long, long dinners in Chinatown.
“Smile, grandpa,” McCardle said, as both of them waited for the flight. “I’m the one who has to go back to kiddie jail. I’ll never graduate.”
“Yes you will. The captain promised. He’s going to find you a chair at Washington University.”
“Pshaw,” McCardle said. “I can read menus and baseball scores, but not a book.”
“No one can stop you from reading.”
“Grandpa, the sentences don’t hold in my head.”
“I’ll ask Loren to locate a tutor.”
“Wouldn’t work. It’s become a habit with me,” McCardle said. “You’re going to jail, ain’t you, grandpa?”
“Not if I can help it.”
“But that’s what the father was hinting at when he talked about your pension plan.”
“Talk is talk,” Isaac said.
“Grandpa, we could hide together. I don’t have to get on that plane. St. Louis has some streets that nobody wants to remember. We could get there by car.”
“It’s tempting,” Isaac said. “But I can’t.”
The boy was given his boarding pass. He didn’t quite know how to say good-bye. “You could write to me, grandpa, from prison. I’d be proud to get your letters.” And then he ran to the gate.
20
Isaac fell into a wicked depression without the boy. It had nothing to do with the beast in his belly. He missed McCardle. The boy had reminded him how lonely he was. He’d played detective too long. He wasn’t some medieval knight home from the crusades. Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe. He was more like a mechanical bear. But even a bear had particular needs. And this bear had a sudden desire for family. He called his daughter in Seattle. Her husband picked up the phone. And Isaac was embarrassed. Because he couldn’t recollect the husband’s name. She was always moving from man to man. But the bear remembered just in time.
“Hello, Mark,” he said. Mark was a public defender, a lawyer of the people. He couldn’t have earned enough for them to afford a decent house and a car. The lawyer probably had to walk to work. Marilyn was constantly falling in love with lost causes, like Mark or Manfred Coen. Isaac had been much happier when Blue Eyes was around. Perhaps he had his own affinity for damaged goods.
“Mark, I’d like to speak to Marilyn.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Mark said. Isaac heard him put down the receiver. He’d developed monstrous ears. Mark was pleading with Marilyn. But Isaac couldn’t catch his daughter’s voice until he recognized a scream. It was Marilyn the Wild. “Fuck,” she said. Mark returned to the line.
“She can’t talk right now. She’s taking a nap.”
“Yes,” Isaac repeated. “Taking a nap.” She blamed him for Blue Eyes. And Marilyn had Isaac’s nature. She could never forgive.
“Congratulations,” Mark said.
“What have I done?”
“You put the bank robber away.”
“But suppose,” Isaac said, like some bitter melamed, “suppose you had been representing Henry Armstrong Lee.”
“I only deal with the indigent,” Mark said. “Your man busted up people and robbed banks.”
“But he was caught with twenty cents in his pocket.”
“Isaac, it was a federal case. And I work for the City of Seattle.”
Off the fucking hook, Isaac muttered. They always get off the hook. That’s how lawyers operate. And it doesn’t matter much if their clients are rich or poor. But Maurie was the exception. He would have waived his fee and had the jury crying for the Most Wanted Man in America.
“Mark, will you tell her something? I miss Blue Eyes as much as she does. Good-bye.”
He’d have to keep away from orphans. It hurt too much. But Isaac was drawn to sad people. He’d adopted Blue Eyes, promoted him to detective first grade, and then got him killed. But thank God Kingsley McCardle wasn’t a cop. And Isaac began to consider that other orphan, Margaret Tolstoy. Ah, he was medieval. Because he couldn’t stop caring about Dracula’s Daughter, even though she’d probably betrayed him. But it was the worm, the worm had unhinged Wilfred of Ivanhoe.
Not his Ivanhoes. Sal was bleeding money from both ears. His shylocks were losing a lot of cash. Ivanhoes would grab their little satchels right off the street, or enter Sal’s countinghouses with handkerchief-masks, like Billy the Kid. Or play the part of Sal’s own bagmen and collect from all his clients. There were no car bombs. No shotgun blasts. Just a persistent grinding down of Sal Rubino. The Ivanhoes forged his signature and relieved him of the revenue in his legitimate accounts. Isaac should have gloated, but he couldn’t get out of his gloom.
One of the Department’s own chaplains, Rabbi Horatio Goode, visited Isaac at his flat. He was much more secular than the other chaplains. Isaac had approved a gun permit for Rabbi Goode, and the chaplain wore his Police Special in a holster near his heart. He’d also been a chaplain in the Marines. He was a cowboy from Oklahoma, as burly as Isaac himself, and he never played the pious man. He was president of the Hands of Esau, the fraternal order of Jewish cops, but Isaac wouldn’t attend meetings once he became Commish. He didn’t want to set of
f rivalries between the different orders. He wasn’t a Jewish police commissioner, only the Commish.
They had a glass of whiskey together. “Isaac, I think you ought to visit a shrink. I don’t mean Department bullshit. I can recommend an excellent man. It will all be confidential, of course.”
“Do I look that bad to you, Rabbi?”
“I talked to Cardinal Jim. He agrees. You’re drifting, Isaac. Do you know how many appointments you’ve missed? I’m not sure what you’ve done. And I couldn’t care less.”
“Rabbi, I’m an atheist,” Isaac said.
“You’re still part of my congregation.”
“What congregation? You don’t have a shul.”
“The Department is my shul,” the rabbi said.
“I’ve killed people,” Isaac said.
“That goes with the job.”
“It hasn’t always been for the Department. I’ve bent the rules.”
“That’s between you and your Maker. But you ought to talk.”
“Rabbi, I read somewhere that Freud analyzed his own daughter. Now what kind of shrink would do that?”
“He was a remarkable person,” the rabbi said.
“His own fucking daughter. What could Freud have told her? Darling, we’ll forget the Oedipus complex?”
“Electra, Isaac, the Electra complex.”
“No, Freud treated her like a man.… I have a daughter, Rabbi. She hates my guts.… I’ll survive without a shrink.”
He had no appetite, but he wouldn’t neglect the worm. He brought his milk bottle wherever he went. He waited and waited and wasn’t surprised when he got a call from Becky’s corruptions commissioner. Boris Michaelson. He sucked on the milk for good measure. “Isaac, can you come to my office tomorrow? We have things to discuss.”
“I’ll look at my calendar,” Isaac said. But he had no calendar. “Yes, Boris, I can squeeze you in … what time?”
“Say after lunch. Around half-past two.”
“Perfect.”
Isaac hung up and smiled in the mirror. His appetite returned. Becky had sent her vulture, and now Isaac could fight back. He owed nothing to Her Honor, who’d kept him on as police chief when she arrived at City Hall. She could have sacked him, but Isaac was a popular PC. They’d become lovers of some sort until Isaac found his old schoolmate, Margaret Tolstoy. And then politics fell out the window for Isaac Sidel.
He had bowl after bowl of egg-drop soup in Chinatown. He had Peking duck with plum sauce, even though it bothered him a bit to swallow the duck without Kingsley McCardle. He had shrimp balls with hot peppers. He had General Ming’s chicken. He drank plum wine with the chef. He had pistachio ice cream until his belly ached. He’d glutted the worm and Isaac walked home like a drunken tent, his body pitching from side to side.
He slept until noon.
He shaved in the bathtub.
He wore a clean shirt and his best cologne.
He arrived at Michaelson’s office on Maiden Lane. It was two twenty-nine. The corruptions commissioner had his “Three Sisters,” his own little gang of young prosecutors who’d become notorious in Manhattan. Michaelson had a mandate from the governor and Becky Karp to get at the bad guys who worked for the City of New York. And the governor had provided him with three top assistant attorney generals. None of them was as old as thirty. They’d all graduated from Columbia Law and could have earned fortunes in private practice. But they wouldn’t leave Boris. They had detectives and auditors and City marshals at their disposal. They could reach into any department, seize whatever books they needed, and preside over the arrest of an errant commissioner. Isaac was high on their list. He was the catch these witches wanted to make.
Their names were Susan Sodaman, Selma Beard, and Trish Van Loon. One of them was married, the other two were engaged, but they didn’t contemplate having children until they were thirty-five. And Isaac wondered what a witch’s child would look like. But he had to admit. They were the most attractive witches he’d ever seen. Tall, long-legged women, while Michaelson himself was short and fat, with little hairs protruding from his nose. The Three Sisters adored him.
The worm began to eat at Isaac, eat and eat. The Commish sucked on his milk bottle before Michaelson even opened his mouth. The worm was scared of the Three Sisters.
“You’re looking pale,” Susan Sodaman said. “Would you like to sit?”
“It’ll pass,” Isaac said. “Now tell me what you want.”
“Your resignation,” Michaelson said.
And suddenly the worm stopped pulling and was Isaac’s ally again. “Boris, did you bring your handcuffs?”
“We don’t want to hurt you,” Michaelson said. “You’re the hero of New York.”
“Well, either cuff me, or leave me alone.”
“It’s not as simple as all that,” Michaelson said. And the Three Sisters surrounded Isaac with all their splendid height.
“You’ve become an embarrassment,” Selma said.
“You’ve put yourself right in the middle of a RICO case,” Trish said. The Racketeer-Influenced Corrupt-Organization Act, better known as RICO, was a 1970 law that hadn’t been used against the Mafia until LeComte came along. He didn’t have to prosecute Jerry DiAngelis for an individual murder, which was always hard to prove. He could weave an entire history together, produce a little fable in open court, and show that DiAngelis was the chief of a family involved in the business of crime. The Feds had gone after DiAngelis and Isaac had gotten in the way.
RICO, Isaac muttered. “You mean Jerry and the melamed?”
Michaelson laughed. “The melamed? That’s rich. Isadore Wasser is the brains behind Jerry’s half of the Rubino clan. And he’s a fucking thief.”
“Don’t curse,” Isaac said. “There’s ladies around. And Isadore is a friend of mine.”
“That’s the problem,” Michaelson said. “He’s a little too much of a friend. Isaac, we’ve taped you talking to the old man. We have you on video with DiAngelis outside his rifle club.”
“It’s a free country,” Isaac said.
“Not for a police commissioner it ain’t. You’ve been handing them information, Isaac. I could toss you to the Feds.”
“What’s stopping you?”
“You’re one of us, one of our own.”
“Boris, I’d rather belong to Izzy than you.”
“Isaac, how much cash do you have in the bank?”
“You tell me.”
“Nine hundred dollars and sixty-six cents,” Trish said.
“Can you afford to lose your fucking pension? Resign, Isaac, that’s the only way out. Internal Affairs has enough on you to fry your ass right within the walls of One Police Plaza. Isaac, give up. Go out with a little glory. We don’t want to prosecute. Forget Jerry. You’ve been sleeping with a Soviet agent who likes to call herself Margaret Tolstoy. And you’ve been handing out baseball cards to Syria’s chief of counterintelligence for the whole American desk.”
“Ismail?” Isaac muttered. “He’s a clerk.”
“His name is Amid Rashid.… I think you’d better find yourself a lawyer.”
“I have a lawyer. Maurie Goodstein.”
“That’s a riot,” Michaelson said, winking at the Three Sisters. “Maude’s on the moon. He can’t afford to show his face. His lawyer-client privilege don’t mean shit. Not with RICO on the books. When Jerry goes down, he’ll go down too.”
“He’s still my lawyer,” Isaac said.
“I’m glad you like to be represented by a ghost.”
“He isn’t a ghost,” one of the sisters said. “At least not yet.”
“And even if he appears, Isaac, and LeComte shows him a little mercy, he’s useless to you. Maurie’s all coked up. He can’t put two sentences together.”
“How the hell would you know?” Isaac asked.
“I’ve talked with him on the phone. Oh yeah, Maurie’s been making overtures. I’m his emissary, Isaac. You should have figured that out. I’ll have to neg
otiate for him with LeComte when the time is right. Now be a good boy.”
“Fuck you and your Three Sisters,” Isaac said. “You didn’t call me here for my satisfaction. You’d love to nail me. That’s been your dream all along. But it’s Becky who’s reined you in.”
“You’re wrong, Isaac. She wants you out. You’re worthless to Becky.”
“Remember,” Isaac said, “she’s living in a house of cards. Touch me, and the house could fall.”
“We’ll take our chances,” Michaelson said.
“I’m happy for you.”
“Isaac, what about the boy?”
“Which boy?”
“Ah, what’s his name again?”
The Three Sisters went into the folders on Michaelson’s desk. “Kingsley McCardle,” Selma said.
“I get it now. LeComte sang you a song and you put the squeeze on my First Dep.”
“But the boy had no business being here.”
“I returned him, Boris, didn’t I?”
“He’s still under deep cover. And I happen to be friendly with a certain judge in St. Louis.”
Isaac hopped around the table and grabbed at Michaelson’s tie before the Three Sisters slapped at him with their folders and called in one of Isaac’s own cops. The cop had to wrestle with the police commissioner, remove his hands from Michaelson’s throat.
“Boris, what should we do with this imbecile?” Selma said.
Michaelson coughed. He couldn’t speak for a moment. “Get him out of my sight,” he finally said.
And Isaac left the corruptions commissioner and his Three Sisters, who had a dark silver look in their eyes. He marched down into the street and walked along the bend of Maiden Lane, past the Federal Reserve Bank, with its dark and light gray stones, its steel doors, and its turret on top. America’s own money castle. He was trembling now. He shouldn’t have given up the boy. And then he muttered “Ismail.” What an idiot Isaac had been. The Syrian spy chief and his Jewish connection. And the PC had thought he was befriending a lonely man. The Syrians must have researched Isaac’s interest in baseball. And Ismail had prepared his own fucking legend. Damascus could smile at Isaac Sidel. Amid Rashid, alias Ismail, alias King Farouk, had the singing policeman in the palm of his hand.
The Good Policeman (The Isaac Sidel Novels) Page 16
