The Good Policeman (The Isaac Sidel Novels)

by Jerome Charyn

  The Leonardo brothers, young lords of Dauphine Street, met her flight. She’d told them she had a sick cousin in L.A., or she couldn’t have gotten out of their little parish to search for Isaac Sidel. Emile was thirty-six. Martin was thirty-five. They wore felt hats and sharkskin coats that curled around their bodies like a bat’s wings. They’d both fallen in love with Margaret at a party on Royal Street. They looked like chipmunks with balding heads. They controlled prostitution in the Quarter with two other crime families. But they hadn’t wanted Margaret for one of their cribs. She was their own particular lady. She could speak French with all the Creole maids. She knew how to order tea and turtle soup in half a dozen languages. And she could make them delirious in bed.

  The brothers had given her necklaces and engagement rings, but they hadn’t solved the riddle of how they could marry her and still remain friends.

  “Was it warm in Los Angeles, Red?”

  “Yes,” Margaret told the brothers, but she could feel that edge of irritation in Emile’s voice: they hadn’t believed her story about the cousin. They brought her to their club on Dauphine Street, they had a meal together, and Martin stayed with her that night. She shut her eyes and thought of Isaac while Martin snored with his holster inside his pajamas. The illusion of ordinary life only made her more suspicious. They couldn’t even look into Margaret’s eyes. She woke up the second night with metal on her skin. Martin had given her another bracelet. But there was sadness to the brothers’ deception. They could kill and lure the innocent into some miserable warehouse, but they couldn’t really lie to Margaret. Their hands trembled. Emile developed a tick.

  “We have some business, Red,” Martin told her on the third night. “Like to come?”

  “Of course,” she said.

  And they drove her to a sausage factory near Bayou St. John. She entered the factory with Emile and Martin. She could smell blood and peppers on the walls. The floor was coated with some ancient gelatin, and Margaret almost slipped.

  “Careful, Red.”

  Men in brown uniforms kept coming in and out of the factory; Margaret couldn’t tell if it was an old butchers’ reunion. Then she saw Sal Rubino in a summer hat. “Hello, hon,” he said.

  The brothers kept staring at the walls.

  Sal smiled. “You look sensational with red hair.” Men came in and out of the factory. “The Feds giving you a bonus for nailing Martin and Emile?”

  The brothers began to shuffle their feet.

  “How dumb can the Bureau get? New Orleans is almost like my own backyard. These kids are cousins of mine. I wouldn’t let them drown, Margaret. I wouldn’t let them drown.”

  “Ah, Sal,” Martin said. “Couldn’t we hurt her just a little?”

  “No,” Sal said. “She’s a fucking menace. Only the worst FBI bitch would agree to marry two men.”

  “It’s not official,” Emile said. “We both gave her rings, that’s all. She didn’t make any promises.”

  “Jesus,” Sal said. “The woman’s selling you to the United States and you defend her?”

  “I wasn’t defending her,” Emile said. “I only wanted to give the facts.”

  “Well, she’s going down. Where’s your shooter, Emile?”

  “I wouldn’t come without my shooter,” Emile said.

  “I want both of you to hit her between the eyes.”

  Martin and Emile removed their guns from the elaborate leather cradles they wore. Their hands were steady now. And Margaret was almost glad. She didn’t have to maneuver between the brothers and Sal. She could go to that Odessa under the ground.

  A pair of men in brown uniforms approached. They were carrying shopping bags. Were they looking for fresh sausages in this charnel house? The shopping bags fell to the floor. They were holding Mossberg Persuaders in their arms.

  Emile recognized Jerry DiAngelis. “How are you, padrone?”

  “He’s not your padrone,” Sal said. “He’s a piece of shit.”

  “Who’s the other guy?”

  “The police commissioner of New York.”

  “What’s he doing with Jerry?”

  “Don’t you get it, Emile? They’re a team … pull on the bitch, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Not with a commissioner around,” Martin said.

  “Are you blind? Jerry has his Persuader. Pull on them, before they wipe us out.”

  “We’re citizens of New Orleans,” Martin said. “No PC would ever pull on us in our own fucking parish.”

  “He’s in love with your woman and he hates my guts.”

  Margaret tried to warn them, but she knew it was hopeless for Martin and Emile. They’d never understand Isaac Sidel. She wasn’t even sure if she could understand that crazy Commish. “Martin,” she said, “Emile, put your shooters on the floor and get the hell out of here.”

  “It’s not your business, Red,” Martin told her. The brothers aimed at Isaac and Jerry, and Margaret heard five or six explosions that shook the roof of the sausage factory and splintered the walls. Martin, Emile, and Sal Rubino lay among the splinters. Another man arrived. It was Isaac’s Ivanhoe, the one with the bald head. Burt. He took both shotguns and walked out of the factory.

  She looked at Martin and Emile on the floor. “They really liked me.”

  “Cut it out,” Jerry said. “The Commish saved your life.”

  “And what are you doing here? Your own people tried to kill me half a dozen times.”

  “That was different,” Jerry said. “I couldn’t let Isaac walk into this shit pile all alone. My father-in-law would never forgive me.”

  “And what’s LeComte going to say?”

  “LeComte didn’t back you up. We did.”

  “You’re so charitable,” Margaret said. “You saw an easy way to get rid of Sal. That’s why you’re here.”

  “I’d be dumb not to protect my own interests, wouldn’t I?”

  “And you,” she said to Isaac, he of the dark eyes, who hadn’t uttered a word in this catacomb. “Didn’t I tell you not to follow me?”

  Isaac gripped her hand. And he marched her out of the factory with Jerry DiAngelis. She’d never reach that underground Odessa with Isaac Sidel.

  “I won’t live with you.”

  “Shhh,” Isaac said. “I have to be in Dallas.” And like some kind of husband, he was still holding her hand.

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Isaac Sidel Novels

  Part One

  1

  His name was Caroll Brent. He was a detective on loan from Sherwood Forest, the precinct in Central Park. The police commissioner had copped Caroll Brent. His own squad was afraid of him. He’d become a man without a country at the NYPD, a floater who belonged to Isaac Sidel.

  The PC had a bug up his ass about the Board of Ed. He avoided the schools chancellor, Alejo Tomás, and stepped outside Alejo’s own inspector general. Caroll lived in some fucking fourth dimension, where he had to police the schools of New York City behind Alejo Tomás’ back. He was on his own. He had no official function. Caroll knew he was going to die, just like Manfred Coen, the PC’s former blue-eyed angel.

  He could have quit. He was married to the second-richest woman in New York. His wife, Diana, came from the Cassidys, a tribe of Catholics that was close to Cardinal O’Bannon, prince of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The cardinal took pity on Caroll. Somehow he’d uncovered Caroll’s fourth dimension, and he marched to Isaac Sidel. Isaac pleaded ignorance.

  “I swear to God, Jim. I’m not sure what you’re talking about. Detective Brent does small favors for me from time to time.”

  “Small favors?” the cardinal said, with a cigarette in his mouth. “He’s off the fuckin’ chart. He hasn’t been to Sherwood Forest in a month. Isaac, you’re turning him into a ghost.”

  “Aint that the truth,” Isaac said, adopting a policeman’s brogue for Cardinal Jim. “And I suppose this visit has nothing to do with the fact that he’s married to the goddess Diana.”

  “Don’
t blaspheme, Isaac. You’ll rot in hell.”

  “There are no hells where I come from. It’s all one big purgatory.”

  The cardinal socked Isaac Sidel. And Isaac fell to the floor. He sat on his ass in the purgatory of his own office at One Police Plaza.

  “I’m sorry,” the cardinal muttered, between bites of the cigarette, and helped Isaac to his feet. “You shouldn’t taunt me. I have a temper. I don’t want Caroll at One PP.”

  “Jim,” Isaac said. “Have you ever seen him in my office?”

  “You know damn well what I mean.”

  And he walked out of One PP in his cardinal’s cape. But it didn’t help Caroll. He was doomed to patrolling school yards for Isaac Sidel. He didn’t want to work for the Cassidys. He was a cop. He had none of Diana’s ambition. He didn’t like to mix and mingle. He just wanted to get back to Sherwood Forest.

  But he was in the middle of Harlem on a Saturday night. It scared the shit out of him. He had no back-up. He was a one-man task force. A human android in the service of Isaac Sidel. A Martian on Jupiter’s twelfth moon. He could have made a couple of collars on the street. But he had nothing to do with conventional burglars and drug salesmen. He was staking out a school near St. Nicholas Terrace, drinking coffee out of a thermos bottle. His feet were cold. He didn’t miss the Park Avenue duplex Papa Cassidy had bought for Diana and him as a wedding present. Caroll missed the broken pipes and leaky roofs of Sherwood Forest. The precinct was a former stable, a goddamn firetrap that sucked up wind, rain, and snow. But Caroll had loved it in there until his own squad turned on him, called him the pet of One PP. Blue Eyes Brent.

  And now he saw a great big ass coming out of the second-story window at the school, along with the legs of a piano. It was a baby grand. Jesus. Caroll continued to drink his coffee. The PC had told him about this heist. Sidel seemed to know everything that was going down at Alejo’s schools. He could have told the Inspector General’s office. And Alejo’s cops would have come waltzing into Harlem on this same Saturday night. But Alejo’s cops were clowns, according to Sidel. Caroll was here, and he wasn’t supposed to make a collar but act like some avenging angel.

  He didn’t even wave his gun. He called up to the window. “Denzel, is that you?”

  The piano legs rocked in the window, without the great big ass. Two heads appeared. They looked very angry, as much as Caroll could tell in the dark.

  “Hey motherfucker, what you want with us?”

  “I’m Detective Brent of Manhattan North.”

  The two heads started to laugh.

  “You Isaac’s little sister.”

  “Yeah, Denzel. That’s me. And if you don’t get away from that piano, I’m going to break all four of your legs.”

  “You got no business here. We borrowing the piano from the school board.”

  “Well, borrow it back to where you got it, Denzel. And come on down.”

  He could hear a metallic click and then something that sounded like the popping of a lightbulb. Caroll’s pants were wet. Denzel had shot the thermos bottle out of his hand. The ground was sprinkled with silver and glass. A marksman, Caroll muttered. A marksman with a Saturday Night Special. He still hadn’t taken out his gun.

  “Denzel, I’m getting pissed off.”

  And then he saw a figure in the shadows behind the school-house wall, and Caroll cursed himself and Sidel and the ghost of Blue Eyes. He’d been set up. He ducked into a very narrow gutter when a shotgun angled at him started to explode. Caroll lost the heel of his shoe. His foot was bleeding. He took a flare out of his pocket. He always carried flares on these suicide missions for Isaac. He lit the flare and hurled it at Denzel’s window. The whole of Harlem looked like a Christmas tree. St. Nicholas Terrace could have been Jupiter’s thirteenth moon. The sky seemed to break into molten pieces of red and blue.

  The piano fell out the window.

  Caroll escaped into his fourth dimension, a crazy cover of light.

  2

  He couldn’t run with the Cassidys on a policeman’s pay. He had to borrow. He used a Mafia shylock. No one knocked on Caroll’s door. He was close to the Commish. Blue Eyes Brent, with the brown eyes.

  He had to keep borrowing to pay off the vig. The vigorish alone was a thousand dollars a week. Diana might have cleared his debts, but how could he ask her for the money? He didn’t go shopping for an heiress. He met his future wife on the job. Dee had been threatened by a slasher. The slasher had seen her jogging in Central Park. He’d cut her sweatshirt with a hunting knife. He began calling her on the phone. She had all the connections of a Cassidy. Caroll was put on the case, the brown-eyed detective from Sherwood Forest.

  She was twenty-nine and had never been married. He escorted her to the opera, the opening of art shows, the New York Film Festival. The department paid for his rented tux. It was a glory assignment, but Caroll didn’t like it. He tried to duck out on Diana, invent some crime that would keep him away from her, but she always asked for him. She’d become Caroll’s case.

  He couldn’t bear parties, operas, charity balls. He wouldn’t flirt. But her friends began to notice him. He was Dee’s escort. He absorbed whatever she absorbed. He met Stewart Hines, the junk-bond king. “That female you’re with is worth half a billion dollars. She could buy the Chrysler Building if she wants. All it would take is her signature.”

  “I wouldn’t know, Mr. Hines.”

  The junk-bond king chuckled to himself. “Who’s going to be the lucky boy that bags Diana?”

  “I guess one of her suitors.”

  “Have you seen any, son?”

  Caroll couldn’t say. He was guarding her six or seven times a week. He’d never even kissed her good night. She was Ms. Cassidy and he was Detective Brent. And once, while they were returning to her apartment after some ballet or ball, the slasher appeared from behind a tree with his hunting knife. He was shorter than Caroll. He had the grim face of a poor urban farmer. Caroll recognized him. He was a gardener from the Department of Parks who often cut the shrubbery around Sherwood Forest. His name was Fred.

  Caroll stood in front of Diana and moved toward the knife. “Come on, Freddy, you aren’t going to use that thing.”

  “I proposed to her,” he said. “She wouldn’t have me.”

  “That’s a lie,” Diana said. “Detective, I—”

  Caroll frowned at her and she shut up.

  “Come on, Fred.”

  The gardener tried to lunge at Diana, and Caroll had to slap him with the butt of his off-duty gun. He handcuffed the gardener and read him his rights. The case never even went to trial. Fred the gardener was still sitting in the psycho ward at Bellevue. Caroll received a five-thousand-dollar check in the mail from Diana Cassidy. And a note. I miss you.

  He made an appointment with Diana through her social secretary. He returned the check. “I can’t take this.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s part of my job. I’m paid to protect you.”

  “Then call it conscience money, Detective Brent.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “You can visit Fred once in a while. Bring him flowers.”

  “I’ve already visited him.”

  “Don’t argue,” she said. “And why haven’t you visited me?”

  “Because my tour is over. We found Fred. Or I should say, Fred found us. But tell me one thing. Did you ever talk to him before that night?”

  “What do you mean, Detective?”

  “He jumped out from behind that tree and said he’d proposed to you but you wouldn’t have him.”

  “I don’t recall that piece of conversation.”

  “But did you talk to him?”

  “No, Detective. I didn’t talk to him. He’s a maniac … oh, I might have seen him at the Reservoir. He did work for the park. I might have laughed with him.”

  “And he might have proposed.”

  “Detective, things like that happen a thousand times a day.”

  “But it mig
ht not have been a joke to Fred. What if he was serious? He proposed. You rejected him and—”

  “He came after me with a knife.”

  “But you’re safe now, Ms. Cassidy. And I have to go.”

  “What if I wanted you to stay?”

  “I’d still go back to my precinct.”

  “But I could always produce another Fred. I’m spoiled. I’m rich. And I’m rotten … take off your clothes.”

  He made love to Diana while her social secretary sat in the next room. Diana had purple eyes. Her ass didn’t have a single flaw. Her body tasted of nectarines ripening on a tree.

  He had a visit from her lawyer. The lawyer handed him a document that was seven pages long. It was a prenuptial agreement.

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Detective Brent, didn’t you ever hear the expression about a ‘gift horse’? Just sign the document. Dee wants to marry you.”

  “She’s confusing me with that gardener, Fred. I never proposed.”

  “Forgive me, sir, but you don’t propose to half a billion dollars. She’s the only heir to the Cassidy fortune. And she’s a hell of a looking lady.”

  “She’s still confusing me with Fred. Good-bye.”

  Caroll got drunk. He wandered into Sherwood Forest. He didn’t have his handcuffs or his gun. His captain sent him home. “Go on, kid. You need a rest.” Caroll had a hook at Police Plaza. He was the PC’s favorite boy.

  Diana was waiting for him when he got home. She sat curled up outside his door, smelling of nectarines. “Do you know how much it cost me to have my lawyer prepare that agreement?”

  “You can afford it. You’re an heiress. I’m from the Rockaways. I grew up with ten dollars in the bank.”

  “That’s why I need a lawyer. A lot of people want to get into my pants. How could I really tell if a man was in love with me or my father’s fortune?”

  “Ms. Cassidy, we’re not even acquainted.”

  “We’re acquainted enough. You’ve been seeing me every night for sixteen weeks.”