The Good Policeman (The Isaac Sidel Novels)

by Jerome Charyn

Caroll made love to her again. He signed the prenuptial agreement. His potential sons and daughters would be much richer than Caroll, but he’d get some kind of “dowry” if he stayed with Diana for ten years. They were married in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, although Caroll wasn’t a Catholic. It was Cardinal Jim who recited the Mass. Caroll’s picture was on the society page. He thought the Cassidys wouldn’t accept a cop like him, but they were relieved to have a husband for Diana. There was a banquet at the Pierre. Caroll’s mom and dad were dead. He came from a line of fishermen. His great-great-grandfather had been very rich, while the Cassidys shoveled pigshit in Sligo or some other Irish county. But the Brents suffered a decline. Each new generation was poorer than the last. Caroll’s father was also a fisherman. He died at forty, a shriveled man.

  Papa Cassidy was a capitalist. He helped start up companies. He was a bottler, a builder, a grower of grapes and figs. He’d had no sons. And his only daughter couldn’t seem to get engaged … until she met this cop. He welcomed Caroll into the tribe, wanted to make a venture capitalist out of him, but Caroll was tied to a precinct in Central Park. Papa didn’t complain, as long as the boy held to his daughter.

  Caroll began to like the Cassidys. They floated with the rich, but they weren’t snobs. And he realized he’d been crazy about Diana all the while he guarded her from the slasher. Freddy was the psychopathic Cupid in Caroll’s life. He’d never have known Dee without that gardener.

  And so he borrowed and borrowed to pay off the vig. He could have gone to one of the Cassidys, but he didn’t want them involved in his affairs. He went into the streets and found his own shylock, Fabiano Rice, who was attached to the Rubino “crime family.” Fabiano’s boss, Sal Rubino, had been murdered in New Orleans. By one of the Rubino captains, Jerry DiAngelis … and Isaac Sidel. That was the word out on the street. Isaac was thick with Jerry’s father-in-law, Izzy Wasser, the brains behind Jerry’s side of the clan. Izzy Wasser had suffered a stroke. And now the Rubinos were in the toilet. But that didn’t help Caroll with the vig.

  Isaac had gone to jail for being chummy with DiAngelis and his father-in-law. But no jail could hold the Commish. He beat the rap and got rid of Sal Rubino. Only in New York could you have a police commissioner who was also a hitman. Isaac never took a dime, but he was obsessed with the children of Alejo Tomás’ schools. He felt that every school board was riddled with thieves. He had to root them out. And Caroll was the gardener he picked. Caroll joined school boards under ficticious names. He chased after the superintendents of several districts. He stopped school boards from lending out pianos. He was shot at, pissed upon, run after with a razor, and all the while he had this vig.

  He was in a bad mood. He met with Isaac in a bumpy corner under the Williamsburg Bridge. The sky was black over Caroll’s head. There was nothing but walls. Isaac needed a shave. And Caroll had to wonder if Sidel also lived in some fourth dimension. The Commish had a daughter. But she’d disowned her dad. Her name was Marilyn. She’d loved Manfred Coen. Caroll had never seen the lady. But he sympathized with her.

  “Montalbán,” Isaac said. “I want that motherfucker.”

  His face was dark blue. He looked like Captain Ahab. But Caroll couldn’t tell what kind of whale Isaac had in his ass. He was outside human territory, under the Williamsburg Bridge.

  “But you don’t have to ruin a poor assistant principal.”

  “Rosen was on the take. He’s going down with Montalbán.”

  “Come on, Isaac. He’s months away from retirement. Jesus, will you leave the little guy alone?”

  “He took food from the mouths of second-graders. He robbed fucking pencils. He’s part of Montalbán’s gang.”

  Carlos Maria Montalbán was superintendent of School District One B in Manhattan. One B encompassed the Lower East Side. And Montalbán ran the district like a warlord, dispensing favors, hiring, firing, bullying local school-board members. He was a cousin of the chancellor, Alejo Tomás. He’d served in Nam, but no one could find Montalbán’s war record. Isaac believed that Montalbán was a pirate left over from the Green Berets. But the PC couldn’t prove a thing.

  “I’m tired of protecting pianos, Isaac. I want my old nut back.”

  “Ah, you’ve been talking to Cardinal Jim,” Isaac said, with his policeman’s brogue.

  “I never talked to Jim. I wouldn’t betray you.”

  “Well, he knows your whereabouts.”

  “Isaac, the man married Diana and me. He’s not blind. He can tell I’m out fishing for you. And he wonders to himself why he can never catch me at my precinct.”

  “Your precinct is where I say it is.”

  “I want my old nut.”

  “I’m not giving you Sherwood Forest, and that is fucking final. I won’t waste my best man. You can talk to horses and trees on your own time. Montalbán is a thief.”

  “Then arrest him, Isaac.”

  “I can’t,” the PC said in the gloom of all the stones around him. “No one believes me. The D.A. won’t move to indict. He says I have no case against Montalbán. It’s clubhouse politics. Montalbán and his cousin are Party men. Alejo owns the Bronx, and Montalbán is captain of the Lower East Side. Let him steal from the Democrats. But this is my neighborhood, Caroll. And those are my children he’s hurting. I want him stopped.”

  “Then oust the fuck. Run for president of the local board.”

  “I can’t,” Isaac said. “They’ll call it nepotism. The police commissioner sticking his fingers in local school business.”

  “So I have to be your point man. With illegal searches and wiretaps. Isaac, I’m the one who could be arrested.”

  “How else can I grab Montalbán?” Isaac groaned. “And who would dare arrest you? You work for me.”

  “Isaac, I was shot in the heel last week.”

  “You’ll survive,” the PC said.

  “You don’t give a shit, do you? As long as you get Montalbán. But I’m not going to crucify any more little old men.”

  “Him? Rosen. He’s Montalbán’s creation. A greedy kike.”

  “Isaac, he’s a member of your own fucking tribe.”

  “Who says? I’m strictly a Sunday Yid. That’s when I light candles to my dead mama. I have no religion the rest of the week.”

  Caroll couldn’t wear down this Ahab who worshipped with a bug up his ass. Education. Isaac wouldn’t deal with the Inspector General’s office. He’d send Caroll into some fourth dimension so Caroll could get killed. And then that merciless man smiled in the dark. Caroll could see the tips of his teeth.

  “Are you short of money, kid? I hear you’ve been getting close to Fabiano Rice. He’s a bad boy. He belonged to Sal Rubino.”

  “But Sal’s asleep.” You killed him, Caroll muttered in his head. He caught some of your buckshot in New Orleans, Mr. Sidel.

  “Caroll, let me help you if you can’t make the vig.”

  “I don’t need help.”

  “It’s hard being married to the rich, aint it?”

  “I’m doing all right. The son of a fisherman, with a cardinal on his side. I can’t complain.”

  “But I could step on Fabiano’s feet.”

  “It’s not your business, Isaac. Fabiano’s my affair.”

  “Does Diana know?”

  “It’s not your business,” Caroll had to say again. And he was close to massacring Sidel, beating him around the ears so that Isaac’s blue face would explode with grief. “I’ll talk to little Rosen. I’ll get him to confess. I’ll map all of Montalbán’s strategies for you. I’ll find the pencils he stole. But stay out of my life.”

  He walked to Stanton Street, where little Rosen lived, an assistant principal who’d been married and divorced, and returned to the “Cradle,” as Isaac liked to call the Lower East Side. The little man was all alone. He had no more wives. He was sixty-two. Like Isaac, he had a daughter who shunned him. Caroll couldn’t understand how Rosen had gotten mixed up with Montalbán. Rosen’s milieu was Manhattan and Quee
ns, not Vietnam. He didn’t snort coke. He wasn’t into little boys and girls. Why the fuck had he become a thief?

  He let Caroll into his apartment without a squawk. He boiled some tea in a pot, cut slices of strudel from a kosher bakery next to the Harry S. Truman Democratic Club, where Montalbán and his cronies held sway. Little Rosen cried into his tea. He wore a starched shirt. His necktie was royal blue.

  “Will I go to jail, Mr. Brent?”

  “Not if I can help it,” Caroll said. It almost seemed as if little Rosen was his stoolie. And then Caroll thought, Fuck. He is my stoolie.

  “What does Montalbán have on you?”

  “Nothing,” Rosen said.

  “Then how did he get you to steal?”

  “We didn’t see it as stealing,” Rosen said. “I was Carlos’ bookkeeper. We moved merchandise around … from school to school.”

  “Come on, I have you on tape. You were selling drugs.”

  “Not to kids,” Rosen said.

  Little Rosen didn’t realize that a lone detective had come to drink tea. He figured Caroll was part of some task force, a labyrinthian team called Isaac Sidel.

  “But you sold,” Caroll said.

  “Yes. So we could have a piano at one school, and …”

  “Pianos,” Caroll said. “It always comes down to pianos. You were the Good Samaritan of drug salesmen.”

  “No. I’m sure Carlos kept some money for himself. I did. I bought a suit at Barneys. With a fancy label. I paid in cash. But I never wore it, Mr. Brent.”

  “I’m not after your tail, Rosen. I want Montalbán. Start keeping notes. On all his moves. When he wipes his ass, I want to know about it.”

  Little Rosen started to cry again. “I believed in Carlos. He stole. I stole. But we helped the children. We gave them—”

  “You took money from your own fucking district. You swiped supplies.”

  “But nothing gets done without Carlos Montalbán. I filed reports. I have a desk full of correspondence on our paper shortages. Mr. Brent, I’ve been a teacher all my adult life. I married into the system forty years ago. And I suffered until Carlos came along. He’s our liquid. He’s also our glue. Yes, he steals. But we have our pencils now. The children have their books.”

  “And Montalbán is a millionaire. You’ll help me, won’t you, Rosen?”

  “Do I have a choice?” little Rosen asked, tugging at his royal blue tie. Caroll felt ill. He drank a glass of water from Rosens sink and said good-bye. He was shivering on the stairs. He liked little Rosen, who’d have to retire to a hole in the wall on Stanton Street, with his suit from Barneys and boxes of pencils made in Mexico. Caroll hardly knew Rosen, and he loved and hated him like any stoolie. Fucking Isaac Sidel.

  3

  Caroll had to wear his own blue tie. Diana was giving a party. There were forty guests. They looked like mice on a football field. Diana’s living room wrapped around Park Avenue. Caroll couldn’t relate to such a long room. He’d always be a guest here, no matter who owned the apartment. He was a WASP bridegroom in a city of Irishers, Italians, Latinos, blacks, White Russians, Chinese, Koreans, Jews …

  He bumped into Jim. The cardinal archbishop of New York had become his rabbi at One Police Plaza. Jim was drinking a glass of exquisite white wine. The Cassidys had their own fucking grapes and figs.

  “Laddie,” Jim said, “how’s life?” And then he looked into Caroll’s eyes. “Pay no mind to me at all. I’m talkative when I get into my cups. A bitter old man.”

  “What are you bitter about?”

  “Isaac Sidel.”

  Caroll had to hide his own bitter laugh. “I can’t discuss police business, Cardinal Jim.”

  “That’s the problem. It aint police business. Isaac’s declared himself emperor of Manhattan. He’d like to bring down the whole Board of Ed. I can’t allow that. I have sons and daughters in the public schools. I talked to Isaac about you. Did he mention that?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “I wasn’t doing you any favors. Mind, I love Diana. But I don’t see why you have to guard pianos for Isaac Sidel. He doesn’t have the City seal on his arse.”

  “Jim, did one of your monsignors track me to Harlem last Saturday night?”

  “I have my spies, same as Isaac … and you’ve been worrying your wife. She’s not so happy about these midnight treks. Sherwood Forest, that’s the place for Caroll Brent.”

  “Dee said something to you?”

  “No, no. I overheard a conversation. I’m a terrible eavesdropper. I have a donkey’s ears.”

  And the cardinal slipped away with his glass of wine into the depths of that living room. Caroll climbed up the stairs of the duplex and entered the vast employ of Diana’s kitchen. It could have been the galley on board some monumental ship. Diana had a pair of sous chefs, but she did most of the cooking. She’d gone to a cooking school in Paris.

  He approached her while she stirred a white chocolate pudding. She had short blond hair and the legs of a gallant pony, this billion-dollar wife of Caroll’s. Financiers shuddered when she came into a room, because she was Cassidy’s daughter. She had her own full-time accountant, who buried Caroll’s income within the book-long pages of Diana’s tax returns. He was like a baby inside the household. But he loved her, and Diana’s millions only brought him grief.

  She had purple eyes. Her nose was perfect. Her mouth was slightly crooked. Her neck was shaped like a bishop’s stick. It still excited him to stand near Dee, sniff her perfume in the midst of all her concentration on the pudding. But she could feel Caroll behind her, and she dismissed the sous chefs. “Darling,” she said. “We have guests. I have to be down in a minute. I can’t leave Cardinal Jim alone. He’ll take out his poker deck and make paupers of everybody. So give me one little squeeze.”

  He kissed her while the pudding bubbled, half his face inside her mouth, but he could sense that something was wrong. She’d been like a sleepwalker in bed during the last month. Some corner of her had turned remote. Caroll wondered if it was family business. He couldn’t seem to provide Papa Cassidy with an heir. Dee had gone to the best gynecologists. There was nothing wrong with her … or with Caroll’s sperm count. But they couldn’t make a child.

  He wondered about something else. All that pulling away from him. Did she have a lover? He was terrified of losing Dee, not the Park Avenue “mansion” and all the other trappings of their life. He had nightmares of Dee with another man.

  “Jim says you’ve been complaining about my schedule. You shouldn’t be talking to him about police affairs.”

  Her face widened. “Caroll, I didn’t.”

  “I could quit and become a bloodhound for some fancy lawyer.”

  “Caroll, I wouldn’t want you to quit. I married a policeman. But I wish you didn’t have to go sneaking up to Harlem in the middle of the night. I worry about you. You don’t have a home base … I loved to visit you in Central Park.”

  “It’s temporary,” he said. “I’m on a case.” It was a lie, of course. He was living on Isaac’s crazy moon, setting up wiretaps, dogging Maria Montalbán, persecuting little Rosen. He’d become the bloodhound of the local school boards.

  He went downstairs together with Dee. Heads turned. The company flowed in her direction, except for Stewart Hines, the junk-bond king, who handed Caroll a piece of blue paper. The blue paper was the signature of Caroll’s shylock. It was a cancellation ticket. Caroll was holding the vig, all the interest he owed on his debts to Fabiano Rice.

  “I can’t accept this, Mr. Hines.”

  “Caroll, I’m doing someone a favor, that’s all. I’m the middleman. I was asked to deliver this note to you.”

  “Come on, Mr. Hines. How innocent can you be? I’ve heard you kill half a dozen companies on Diana’s upstairs phone … moving bonds around. That’s your business. But you shouldn’t be carrying this paper. It concerns a particular shylock and me.”

  “Fabiano’s a friend of mine. I used to be his broker. And he said
, ‘If you’re seeing Caroll, please tell him there’s no more vig.’ ”

  Caroll couldn’t punch Hines at Diana’s own party.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Hines, but I can’t accept this.” And he stuffed the blue ticket into Hines’ pants.

  He couldn’t seem to locate the shylock. Fabiano wasn’t at any of his usual haunts. Caroll wondered if the Rubinos were having a war party, and the shylock was sitting somewhere in the dark. But Fabiano made his living out on the street. He had to circulate with his own money. He had to collect the vig, or he wouldn’t have been much of a moneylender.

  And then, while Caroll was chasing his own tail, the shylock suddenly showed. It felt like some abracadabra, a loanshark’s trick. Caroll was sitting at his favorite lunch counter, a dive on Clinton Street. Fabiano appeared with his bodyguard. He looked like an art dealer. He was a small, elegant man. Caroll had gone to him in the first place because there was nothing vulgar about Fabiano Rice. And Fabiano wasn’t close to the Cassidys.

  “Ah, piccolino,” he said, “come sta?” as if the whole world were made of good little Italian boys.

  And Caroll didn’t answer with his usual “bene.” He wasn’t in the mood to play with this moneylender. “You’ve insulted me, maestro,” he said.

  Fabiano sat down away from the window, pinching the pleats of his pants. He ordered an egg sandwich in some melodic language that only countermen could understand.

  “Now tell me why you are so cross?”

  “You brought a third party into our agreement. That particular man happens to know my wife.”

  “But he’s discreet, piccolino. I wouldn’t harm you in family matters. And I have my honor to protect. It’s a third party who has to release you from your vig.”

  “Why do I deserve such kindness, maestro?”

  “Let’s say you have an admirer, a friend.”

  “And that admirer used his influence with Jerry DiAngelis to put the squeeze on my own shylock.”

  “Foolish boy, consider it a gift from God.”

  “A god named Isaac Sidel.”

  “I am not in the habit of bending to Hebrew police commissioners. But you must take the documento. That is the law.” And he returned to Caroll the crumpled piece of blue paper. “The debt remains, piccolino. But now it has no attachments.”