“Always talking, aren’t you, Sidel?” the governor said, with his hat in his hand. “Let me give you a little hint. Long John Silver is closer than you think.”
Isaac stared at Billy. “Governor, what the hell do you know about the Knickerbocker Boys?”
“Nothing much, except that Schyler is missing, and he’s a member of that unfortunate club.”
“Who told you that?”
“Schyler Knott. Don’t look surprised. Landmarks isn’t my province, but I’ve been monitoring Schyler. I am the governor, Sidel. And Schyler kept sending me manifestos. To Billy the Kid from Long John Silver. Stuff about the City’s decline and the purity of its Dutch past, the good old Knickerbocker days.”
“Knickerbocker days? Billy, the Dutch were mongrels, like me and you. Did you encourage Schyler, did you excite his fantasies?”
“Of course not.”
“Why didn’t you talk to the police?”
“I’m talking to you, Sidel. And I have no hard evidence that Schyler himself was involved in the murder of homeless men.”
“What if the victims weren’t homeless? What if they had been taxpayers, pillars of the community?”
“Then I would have gone on prime time and howled my head off. But there’s nothing here to milk. I’m doing you a favor, Sidel. I’m giving you an edge.”
“Billy,” Isaac whispered in the governor’s ear. “You never did a favor in your life.”
They dropped him off in the middle of Harlem. Billy the Kid wanted to lend him a bodyguard. Isaac said no. He was safe among the ruins. He felt like visiting the Seventh Avenue Armory, crawling into his old bed, playing Geronimo Jones. He’d been much happier as a homeless man, living in some foggy present tense, without a future or a past. He’d brought a bag of books on his first trip to the shelter. He’d read Pascal, a short life of Spinoza, some Patricia Highsmith and Dashiell Hammett. Isaac had been a voracious reader ever since his one semester at college. He didn’t have any degrees, like his First Dep. But he loved dark lines on a page, the feel of a sentence, the ordered forest of words.
His pager began to vibrate like an electric worm. He undipped the pager from his belt, looked at the telephone number inside the plastic window. He couldn’t recognize the number. It wasn’t Gracie Mansion or Police Headquarters. He stepped into a telephone booth and dialed. Someone answered gruffly at the other end. “Who’s this?”
“Sidel.”
“What do ya want?”
“Dunno. I was paged.”
“Yeah, yeah. You’re the Commish. I paged ya. We had a little accident.”
“Who are you?”
“It’s confidential. I’m calling from Brooklyn.”
“Is this the River Café?”
“It’s a warehouse. Plymouth Street, number nineteen and a half. The Maggione Paper Company. You can’t miss it.”
Isaac hailed a gypsy cab. He and the driver both got lost. They kept circling under the Manhattan Bridge. It was a scary neighborhood, beside the old Brooklyn Navy Yard and the Farragut housing project, where rats and wild boys roamed the streets. The driver began to shake. “Lots of murders around here.”
“I know. It’s a Mafia dumping ground.”
“Who’s afraid of the Mafia?”
They still couldn’t find Plymouth Street. Isaac paid the driver and got out of the car.
He walked up Prince Street, turned onto Gold, where he discovered a rat that amazed him. It was all furry and moved with the assurance of an alligator. Isaac got out of the rat’s way and stumbled upon Plymouth Street and the Maggione Paper Company. He recognized one of Jerry DiAngelis’ soldiers. The soldier saluted him. Isaac went inside. It was like a cave with huge bundles of compressed paper. Isaac couldn’t bear to imagine the heart ripped out of so many magazines and books. He was a Talmudist. Words on any scrap of paper had a totemic charm to the Pink Commish.
A woman lay beside one particular bundle. She had a bodkin behind her ear, the same sort of needle-knife that had dispatched all the homeless men. But Isaac didn’t find a note from the Knickerbocker Boys. He couldn’t seem to forget how lovely the woman was in her strange repose. Rita Mae Robinson with her arms curled on the ground.
A rat crossed Isaac’s path. He looked up. Jerry DiAngelis was near him in his white coat.
“Can’t you cover her, Jerry? Before the rats eat her eyes.”
“Don’t worry about the rats.”
“Who taught you how to page me? The number’s supposed to be a big secret.”
“Don Isacco, you don’t have any secrets.”
“Yeah. You caught me in Rita’s booth with my cock out.”
“She was your friend. A lot of people know that.”
“How did she get here? She wouldn’t have come to a rat-infested factory on Plymouth Street. It’s the end of the world.”
“What are you saying?”
“She was killed uptown somewhere and dumped in your lap.”
“And you think it was my piece of work? I ordered her execution, huh? And then I paged you to cover my ass. I’m a clever man … I found her, Don Isacco. I could have dropped her in a sink, but I saved her for you.”
Isaac had one of Jerry’s henchmen call Joe Barbarossa. He kept staring at that girl on the factory floor. Rita’s eyes were like dark candles. Her body could have been a displaced flower. She’d died with a sweetness on her face. Whoever attacked her wasn’t a stranger. A word, a kiss, and a bodkin in the neck.
Barbarossa arrived with Albert Wiggens. Isaac didn’t even say hello to Wig.
“Joey, you’ll dust for prints. I don’t want Crime Scene mixing in our affairs.”
“Boss, we’re cops. Sweets will hang us on a tree.”
“Ah, there’s lots of time for lab reports. Joey, some fat fuck carried her here. He would have had to cradle her in his arms, dance with her almost. A fat man, I’m telling you.”
“Boss, what’s her name?”
“Rita,” Isaac said, and then he noticed Wig, who was shivering in this cave like some casualty of war.
“Wig, can I get you a chair?”
Wig never answered. He walked right out of the paper company.
PART FOUR
15.
He didn’t have vengeance on his mind. Wig had to find Harwood before he began punishing people. Harwood was floating around in crack heaven with his unlaced Adidas. The kid was in danger. Harwood couldn’t read, but he kept his mama’s books inside his head. Wig drove across the Manhattan Bridge in Sidel’s own car and raced up to the Ali Baba. He found Harwood in one of the back rooms that served as a drug canteen. Harwood was smoking some dreadful shit out of a dirty glass pipe. His hazel eyes had gone yellow. Wig had to slap Harwood awake. He shoved his coat over the boy’s shoulders, walked him out of the Ali Baba, brought him up to the crib he had in Harlem Heights, and tied him to a chair.
“It aint right, Wiggy,” the boy said, with his constant sniffle.
“You’ll run downstairs and beat up on some old man for a dime bag.”
“Not me. I swear on my mama’s life.”
And Wig, who’d fallen off roofs without a blink, started to cry. “Your mama’s dead.”
Harwood’s lower lip hung out like a hyena. That was how a crackhead laughed. “Stop shittin’ me, Wig. Mama made me sandwiches this morning.”
“This morning don’t mean diddley. She’s dead.”
“Aw, Wig, mama wouldn’t leave me alone.”
“King Isaac found her in a factory. On Plymouth Street. With a pigsticker in her neck.”
“Did that white king off my mama, Wig? He been nosing around, askin’ questions. Me and William had to jump on him.”
“He wouldn’t have hurt Rita Mae. He has dumb ideas about women. It’s called chivalry.”
“Chivalry is a whole lot of shit. It’s for white women. And what was she doin’ in a factory?”
“Getting ready to be eaten by rats. Somebody brought her to that graveyard. Made it look lik
e the Mafia. But it has all of Quentin’s marks. Did he have a fight with your mama?”
“No, Wig. He pays us and we watch the foreigner kids for him. But he’s stingy. He was blackmailin’ mama a little.”
“On account of the john she knifed? That was two years ago.”
“Makes no difference to Quent. He has it written up in his books.”
“I had to ride that corpse down to Florida.”
“See? You workin’ for the man too. You get your touch, like everybody else.”
“Quentin doesn’t own me like he owns your mama.”
“She dead. And the white king killed her.”
“I told you, boy. Isaac doesn’t kill women, white or black.”
“Then who stuck her if it aint him? Mama was valuable to Quent.”
“Yeah, like cattle. Did she quarrel with that other king?”
“Carol? Mama never had no dealings with him. Only Quent.”
“Harwood, you’ve been around crackheads too long. Your brain’s ready to rot. That Carol is the man behind the man. He does the dirty work. How do you think Quent imports those children? Through King Carol … I have to leave you in my crib.”
“Don’t, Wiggy. I’ll die in this chair.”
“It’s the only safe house I have. And I can’t untie your hands. You’ll bolt on me. You’ll do your crack. And you’ll be dead in a couple of hours. Because whoever got your mama will go after you.”
It sickened him to sentence Harwood to a chair, but he couldn’t take the boy with him. Harwood would give all his moves away. Harwood had cocaine eyes and a runny nose. Wig got into the king’s car and drove back down to Ali Baba country. He was just like Isaac, who was always crying. He should have known that Rita wouldn’t survive her booth at the Ali Baba. But he’d lent her a cloak—his reputation out on the street. Quentin knew that Rita had once been his old lady. And Quentin would have to pay for that.
But death was always doing funny tricks. Rita was inside him, like a lost wife. If he hadn’t been such a bandit, he might have settled with her, had his own child. All he had was a fable. The Purple Gang. But he couldn’t kiss a fable, hug it in the dark, hold its hand. He’d pushed Rita toward the Ali Baba, made her into a pros. Sweets wouldn’t have done it. But Sweets had the Revolution behind him, black aristocrats who could sit for family portraits and consider law school for their sons. Wig had never even said hello to his papa. And his mama had scrubbed floors in honkey houses.
Aint no excuse, Mr. Albert Wiggens. Your fox is dead, and don’t you blame it on your breeding.
He walked into the Ali Baba with his ankle holster and his Glock. Wig was the house sheriff who collected his toll every month, that “touch” he shared with the mayor’s secretary. Mario Klein had introduced him to Quehtin Kahn when Wig was chief of the mayor’s detail. He was Mario’s bodyguard and bagman. The little secretary was loyal to Rebecca Karp, but it was Mario who managed New York and maneuvered behind the mayor’s back. And Wig carried so much cash around in his pockets, he felt like a freight train. He’d stroll into clubs that had never seen a black man come through the front door. He’d sit in the poshest chair, smoke a Cuban cigar with all the potentates, and tell stories about the Purple Gang. He loved all those lies. But Sidel got to Mario Klein and tossed Wig off the mayor’s detail. And the only “touch” he had left was the Ali Baba, with all its memories of Rita Mae’s booth.
He got past Quentin’s bodyguards, but that pingpong priest had gone off on a holy mission, so his bookkeeper said. Quent was traveling in behalf of Pingpong Power. The bookkeeper’s name was Eddie Royal. He was a former jockey who’d studied accounting on his own. He was also a thug who controlled all the girls at the Ali Baba and kept the johns supplied with yellow condoms. He wore a Glock in his pants. He was five feet two and vicious as a poisoned, aging doll. He sat behind Quentin’s desk and handed Wig two fat envelopes stuffed with hundred dollar bills.
Wig returned one of the envelopes. “I don’t bag money for Mario anymore.’
“Ah, do us a favor, Wig. Mario’s got a bad cold. Make the delivery.”
“When can I meet with Quent?”
“I told ya. He’s covering a tournament in Yugoslavia. He’s nuts about table tennis. You know that. It’s like a religion to Quent … I’m sorry about Rita, Wig. Where should I send the flowers?”
Flowers. Wig forgot. He’d have to arrange the funeral with Brother William. Rita had no other kin. Harwood. William. And Albert Wiggens. It was Wig who’d have to get Rita into the ground after all the labmen and other ghouls poked around with her body.
“No flowers, Ed. Just contribute something to Rita’s favorite charity.”
“Sure, Wig. What is that?”
“The Roumanian Orphans’ Association.”
“You shouldn’t joke like that,” the jockey said. “It could cost you.”
“Yeah, Ed. Like it cost Rita … was the FBI closing in?”
“Not so loud,” the jockey said. “I wouldn’t trust these walls.”
“What happened? Did LeComte grab a kid and the trail led back to Rita?”
Eddie Royal pulled the Glock out of his pants. Wig reached across the desk in one swoop and knocked the gun out of Eddie’s hand. The jockey was mortified. He didn’t even shout for Quentin’s bodyguards.
“Quent’s the real executioner. He ordered the hit. Why?”
“Don’t get crazy on me, Wig. I got nothing to do with children. That’s a separate account.”
“Yeah, Eddie. It always is. A separate account. But you tell Quent for me that I’m also an executioner. All the pingpong tournaments in the world can’t save him.”
Wig took Mario’s envelope and drove up to the mayor’s mansion. He had trouble at the gate. Larry Quinn, the new chief of Rebecca’s detail, wouldn’t let him inside.
“You’re not welcome here, Mr. Wiggens.”
“I came to see Mario,” Wig said.
“Ah, that lad isn’t receiving visitors today.”
“I suppose King Isaac has him under house arrest.”
“You’re misinformed, Mr. Wiggens. We have no kings at Gracie Mansion. Only a convalescing mayor.”
“I heard that,” growled Rebecca Karp, who’d come down off her porch to greet Wig. “Larry, let him in. I’ve been lonely without Wig. That cocksucker Isaac took him away from me and sent a bunch of spies.”
“I’m not a spy, Your Honor,” said Larry Quinn.
“Of course.” She took Wig by the hand. They climbed up the tiny hill to her porch. Each of them sat in a rocking chair. It was the best gig he’d ever had, Rebecca’s personal bodyguard. He lived on coke and scrambled eggs. He had a chauffeured limousine, a bedroom at the mansion, a maid, a cook. He sold drugs. He collected cash from the Ali Baba, he offed one or two of Mario’s enemies. Police captains saluted him. Mafia princes offered him money. The Secret Service consulted him whenever Ronald Reagan was in town.
He had mint juleps with Rebecca on the porch.
“Be careful of that cocksucker.”
“I’m always careful around Isaac, Miz Rebecca.”
“I’m a prisoner in my own mansion. I never leave the porch.”
“That’s the shame of politics, ma’am. It makes exiles of us all.”
“Were you looking for Mario? The little bastard’s in his room.”
Wig excused himself, went into the mansion, and located Mario in his tiny bedroom behind the stairs. Mario was sucking steam out of a vaporizer. His eyes were bloodshot. He’d been the brains behind Rebecca until Isaac banished him to the back rooms, one more kingmaker who could no longer make a king.
Wig tossed Eddie Royal’s envelope onto the bed. Mario counted all the cash like a greedy child.
“That’s the last tit you’ll ever see from the Ali Baba. I’m gonna whack Quent soon as I can find him. He offed Rita Mae.”
“What if he didn’t off her?” Mario sniffled with a towel over his head to preserve the last dying puffs of steam coming o
ut of the vaporizer.
“Talk sense.”
“It could have been one of the Knickerbocker Boys.”
“Quentin Kahn is the Knickerbocker Boys. He was always good at moving corpses. And you can’t deny it. We own a piece of his ambulance. I’ve been checking around. And them poor mothers he’s been moving aint hoboes. They’re Hungarians or something. Mules he’s had to get rid of.”
“Of course. He promises them hard cash and then King Carol kills them.”
“And Carol killed my Rita.”
“You want Quent. You want Carol. You’re a one-man shooting gallery, but Quentin Kahn has Billy the Kid on his side.”
“Fuck Billy.”
“And Carol is probably a colonel in the Securitate.”
“I eat up colonels every day of the week.”
“Not this colonel, Wig.” And Mario coughed into the vaporizer.
“What should I do, Mr. Mario? Lie down for Quent, tell him it’s okay to get rid of Rita? Why the hell did he finish her, huh? Rita aint with the Securitate. She’s never been to Hungary.”
“Roumania,” Mario said. “There’s a difference. And she was caught in the middle, I imagine.”
“The middle of what?”
“I don’t know. Between Billy the Kid and the FBI. Between Quent and his money people. She was holding his children. Quent was probably trying to cover up his tracks.”
“Then you ought to be his next victim.”
“I’m impregnable,” Mario said with a meager smile. “I have my own palace guard.”
“If you mean Lieutenant Quinn, you’d better start worrying.”
And Wig was out the door.
“Where the hell are you going?” Mario groaned from under his towel. “Keep away from Carol.”
That metal ribbon in his skull started to expand. Only a fool, he muttered, gets shot in the head. He couldn’t afford to have a blackout, not right now. He was driving Isaac’s blue Plymouth, and he could only see out of one eye. Fucking Cyclops, he said. Quent kept his ambulance at a deserted firehouse on Eleventh Avenue. The firehouse had a caretaker called Archibald Harris, a nigger who was down on his luck. He was one of those unfortunate troubadours who’d played baseball in the nigger leagues and never got to bat for the New York Giants. He was just a little too late. He was a thirty-three-year-old second baseman with the Brown Bombers when Jackie Robinson broke the “color barrier” and joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. Archibald already had a game leg. He began knocking off liquor stores in Harlem. He was sent to Sing Sing for nine or ten years. Wig never liked to talk baseball with Archie Harris. He didn’t have Isaac’s fever for the game. But he’d met homeless men inside the Seventh Avenue Armory who’d seen Archibald play forty years ago at some nigger all-star game. That fool loved to field ground balls without a glove. He could throw with either hand. He’d clutch the bat way above the handle and slap home runs without even bending his wrists. He had cataracts in both eyes now. He polished Quentin’s ambulance, changed the oil, and drove it from time to time, half blind as he was. He carried a pigsticker on him. He learned how to use it when he was with the Bombers, barnstorming from town to town, living like black gypsies. He’d befriended Rita, taught her most of his tricks. But a blind refugee from the nigger leagues couldn’t save her life.
Little Angel Street (The Isaac Sidel Novels) Page 9
