He hung up the phone, and managed to fall asleep. He didn’t have much of a rest. A boy from the Mayor’s office rang him up. His Honor had fled the coop again, walked out of Gracie Mansion in his pajamas on a midnight stroll.
The old bum took a cab uptown. He had the cabbie rake the streets around Carl Schurz Park. Then he got off. His Honor, Mayor Sam, had gone down to Cherokee Place. He didn’t seem deprived in striped pajamas and a red silk robe. When he saw the old bum he began to weep. He was sixty-nine, and he’d turned senile on the Democratic Party over the past two years.
“Laddie, what happened to you?”
“It’s nothing, Your Honor,” the old bum said. “Just the clothes I’m wearing.”
“You gave me a fright,” the Mayor said. “We have to fatten you up.”
His own aides accused him of being a decrepit fool. He belongs in a nursery, they said. Ancient Sam. But he had no difficulty recognizing the old bum. The Mayor was as lucid as a man in pajamas could ever be. It wasn’t a drifting head that brought him out of his mansion. It was a fit of anxiety. All his politics was shrinking around him. Most of his deputies had abandoned Sammy Dunne. He was a Mayor without a Party. He’d become a ghost in the City of New York. You didn’t speak of Mayor Sam.
He still wept for the old bum.
“Isaac, I know the enemies you have. They’ll eat you alive after I’m gone.”
“Let them eat, Your Honor. I’ve got plenty of hide for them.”
“Laddie, what are you talking about? You’re skin and bones.”
The old bum was thinking of Annie Powell. That scar of hers stuck to him. Annie’s “D.” He walked the Mayor home to Gracie Mansion and went to his hotel without a name.
3
WHY should a whore have turned his head, a bimbo with damaged goods? She couldn’t have fared very well with that gash on her face. The worm was biting at him. “Cunt,” he told the worm, “are you in love with her too?” He would stroll down to Forty-third to be sure no one molested her. His shuffling with his hands in his pockets didn’t please Annie Powell. She couldn’t have too many clients with an old bum hanging around. “We’re having lunch,” he would say. “Come on.” It sounded like a threat to her, not an invitation. And she had to leave her corner.
This time he took her to the Cafe de Sports. A bum and a girl in a whore’s midriff eating liver pâté. “Annie,” he said, “there’s going to be a raid at two o’clock. The Commissioner has decided to grab single women off the streets. So you’d better have a long, long lunch.”
They had three bottles of wine. “What’s your name?” she said, with a drunken growl, “and what the hell do you want from me?”
“Just say I’m Father Isaac.”
“A priest,” she said, mimicking him, “a priest without a collar … is it your hotel or mine, Father Isaac?… I perform better in strange hotels.”
“Don’t bluff me, Annie Powell. You haven’t done too many tricks … I want to know who put you on the street?”
“Mister,” she said, “that’s none of your business.”
The old bum had to let her go. The worm dug into his bowels when he thought of her going into doorways with other men, getting down on her knees for them. He had to find this Martin McBride and break his Irish toes. But Father Isaac had an appointment today. He washed the dirt off his neck. He shaved the hairs under his nose that might have been construed as a crooked mustache. He bought a half-hour’s time of the hotel’s single bathtub. You wouldn’t have recognized him when he stepped out of the tub. The old bum had shed twenty years. He had a pair of argyle socks in his room. He unwrapped the only suit in his closet. A silk shirt materialized from his drawer. A tie from Bloomingdale’s. Underpants that were soft enough for a woman’s skin. The ensemble pulled together. A younger man, fifty, fifty-one, emerged from the hotel. He had a sort of handsomeness. The worm had helped redefine the contours of his face. It gave him character and fine hollows in his cheeks.
A cab brought him to a lounge at the New School for Social Research. People shook his hand. He was more despised than worshiped here, but everybody knew him. Isaac Sidel, First Deputy Police Commissioner of New York and mystery cop. He was fond of disappearing, of putting on one disguise after the other. He wouldn’t sit at his offices on the thirteenth floor of Police Headquarters. Isaac called the new brick monolith a “coffin house.” He did all his paperwork at the old, abandoned Headquarters. You had to search him out at Centre Street, or in some hobo’s alley. Isaac was unavailable most of the time. His deputies were loyal to him. They ran his offices without a piece of discord. Isaac could always get a message inside.
The PC, Handsome Johnny Rathgar, couldn’t scold him. Isaac was becoming a hero with all the news services. He would walk into a den of crazed Rastafarians and come out with a cache of machine guns. He settled disputes with rival teenaged gangs in the Bronx, parceling out territories to one, taking away bits from the other. Arsonists and child molesters would only surrender themselves to First Deputy Sidel. Isaac had no fear in him. He danced with any lunatic who came up close. You could throw bricks at him off the roofs. Isaac wouldn’t duck his head. The First Dep was in great demand. Most organizations in the City wanted to hear him speak. Synagogues, churches, political clubs. Either to heckle him or clap. The Democrats had to live with him for now, because he was close to Sammy Dunne, and it was a little too early to drive “Hizzoner” out of Gracie Mansion. But the Mayor was about to turn seventy, and he couldn’t hold a squabbling Party together. The Democrats would lash at Isaac when Sammy vacated City Hall. Republicans were frightened of Isaac’s popularity, and the Liberals hated his guts. He was only a cop to them. Isaac despised them all, hacks and politicians who would grab the coat of any winner, and sneer at a Mayor’s loss of power. He liked the old Mayor, who was being jettisoned by his Party. The Mayor didn’t have a chance in the primaries. He was too dumb, too weak, too old. The Daily News had already spoken. New York would have its first Lady Mayor, the honorable Rebecca Karp, who’d come to politics via the beauty line. She was Miss Far Rockaway of 1947. She grabbed votes for Democrats with her bosoms, her bear hugs, and her smiles. She’d been a district leader in Greenwich Village. Now she was Party boss of Manhattan and the Bronx. Rebecca needed two boroughs to fight the pols of Brooklyn and save New York from the bumbling political machine of Samuel Dunne.
Isaac was here, at the New School, in liberal territories, to act as the Mayor’s dog in a debate with Melvin Pears, sachem of the Civil Liberties Union, and a defender of Rebecca Karp. Isaac could have told Rebecca to shit in her hat, but Mayor Sam was in trouble. He hardly went downtown to visit City Hall. His margins were being eaten away. Isaac was the only voice of strength he had.
Pears was seated with the First Dep at a table near the end of the lounge. The Mayor swore that Melvin was romancing Becky Karp, but Isaac didn’t always believe Mayor Sam. Melvin came from an aristocratic family, and he had a pretty wife. He was a man of thirty-five, with a fondness for rough clothes: he had workingman’s boots at the New School and a cowboy shirt with a button open on his paunch. The boy likes to eat, Isaac observed, thinking of the worm he himself had to nourish. The wife sat next to Melvin. She had unbelievable gray-green eyes that sucked out Isaac with great contempt. He wondered where her shirts came from. The wife wasn’t wearing Western clothes. Isaac felt uncomfortable sitting near those boots of Mel’s. He shouldn’t have arrived in argyle socks. His bum’s pants would have held him better in this lounge.
Pears called Isaac a lackey of the Mayor, an instrument of repressive law. Isaac, he said, who drives prostitutes off the street at the Mayor’s convenience, without considering the plight of these girls, or their histories. “I’ll defend every prostitute you haul in,” Pears said. “His Honor always sweeps out before the primaries. You’re Sammy’s broom.”
Isaac growled inside his head. Sammy had enough trouble getting in and out of his pajamas. Isaac couldn’t figure what was going on in the str
eet. He had his spies. It wasn’t the Civil Liberties Union that was keeping the girls hard at work. You couldn’t hold them in a cage for more than half an hour. They had a league of bondsmen holding hands with their “players.” The whores multiplied with or without the Police. Inspectors at Isaac’s office claimed to know every dude in town. They talked of a mysterious nigger gang that was organizing pimps into some kind of union. Black Mafia, they said. The “blues” of Sugar Hill. Only you couldn’t find any of them. Where were the “blues” of Sugar Hill? It made no sense. Isaac’s spies had nothing to sell. They shrugged their shoulders and swore some “heavy shit” was landing in the gutters. That’s why Isaac had to go underground, become the old man of Forty-seventh Street. Isaac only trusted what he himself could sniff. And this Melvin Pears was babbling about whores’ rights. Every bimbo in Manhattan had more rights and privileges than Rebecca Karp or Pears’ green-eyed wife.
Pears had a bald spot, bigger than Isaac’s. He was still chopping at the First Dep. “All the glory comes to you,” Pears said. “You solve the big murder, the big hit, and anonymous old men and women are afraid to go out at night.”
Isaac interrupted him. “Would you like us to keep every fourteen-year-old boy in a bullpen after six o’clock?”
Pears leapt on Isaac. “That’s the smug answer you can always get from a cop. Arrest everybody and crime will go away.”
Isaac didn’t have Melvin’s courtroom wit. He shut his mouth and let the boy talk. His head drifted to Annie Powell. That “D” on her could sting a man’s eyes. That girl’s no goddamn hooker. She was being punished for something she did. Annie’s sin.
Pears had stopped talking. What was Isaac supposed to do? Defend Mayor Sam? List Police accomplishments? Talk about the new Headquarters and that idiot, Tiger John? Promise an end to sodomy in the women’s house of detention? Isaac talked about Oswald Spengler. Pears scratched his head. Rebecca Karp’s admirers must have considered him a little cracked. “It’s ungovernable,” Isaac said. “… this terrain. Psychosis is everywhere … in your armpit … under your shoe. You can smell it in the sweat of this room … we’re all baby killers, repressed or not … how do you measure a man’s rage? Either we behave like robots, or we kill. Why do you expect your Police Force to be any less crazy than you?”
There was laughter in the room, some hissing.
Pears shouted at him. “Sidel, you haven’t gotten to the point at all. What do I care about your philosophies? Silly contrivances. Glib remarks. We do have a City, and it has to be governed. And the Mayor, your friend, is doing an invisible job.”
The debate was over. People were congratulating Melvin Pears. He’d gotten around the ignorant carp of a half-educated cop. Isaac only had one semester at Columbia College. He couldn’t have told you about the theories of John Locke. He had bits of Nietzsche in him, Spengler, Hegel, and Marx. His readings were savagely curtailed.
Crowds formed close to the lawyer Pears. One old lady came up to Isaac. She was muttering something he couldn’t understand. All Isaac could make out was the green in Mrs. Pears’ eyes.
One of his own inspectors, Marvin Winch, was waiting for him on the curb. Isaac promised himself that he would manufacture several little talks before he entered another lounge. Pears had cut out Isaac’s throat. The First Dep had only a skimpy sense of logic. His ideas came from the worm in his gut. He wasn’t a civilized man.
“Well?” Isaac said to Inspector Winch. “Who’s Martin McBride?”
“A lowlife. He runs with the nigger pimps.”
“Does he have a nephew?”
“Yes, a carload of them. Our Martin’s got nephews everywhere.”
“How many of them have that big D I told you about?”
“Only one. Dermott.”
“Dermott McBride?”
“No. He took the Irish out of his name. He shortened it to Bride.”
“Bring that cocksucker to me. I’d like to have a chat with Dermott Bride. We have a girlfriend in common.”
“Isaac, I can’t. Nobody knows where Dermott is.”
“Then plug into your computer and find him for me.”
Oh, they could laugh and call him Sammy’s dunce, but Tiger John Rathgar had eyes and ears, like any man, and a mouth to bark with and eat cigarette paper when he was in the mood. A year ago “Hizzoner” had said, “Johnny, the pimps have to live like the rest of us. What’s the point of chasing nigger girls off the street? They’ll be strolling again in twenty-four hours.” So John throttled his pussy patrol, yanked out most of its teeth, and then the bankbooks began coming in. With the Irish names inside. Simon Dedalus, Molly Bloom, and all. John didn’t perform one crooked act to earn his Molly Blooms. He promised nothing to the pimps of Whores’ Row. Could he help it if Jamey O’Toole tossed bankbooks in his lap?
Now it was an election year, and “Hizzoner” wanted the Black Marias out, wagons to hold nigger prostitutes. John had to activate the pussy patrol. But the Mayor warned him, “No white girls. We can’t afford a mistake. If your lads pick up a housewife, the papers will crucify us. I’m depending on you, Johnny boy.”
John went along with the pussy patrol. His chauffeur, Christianson, put him in front of the Black Marias, which were ancient green wagons with dented roofs. John decided what whores would go into the wagons. He picked the fattest girls, girls with low midriffs and pockmarks on their thighs. The wagons filled up in less than an hour. The girls sat in them and bitched. They couldn’t get away from the heat of their own bodies. They tore at their midriffs to cool themselves, and they took long bites of air. John signaled to his chauffeur. “Christie, I’ve had enough. Come on.”
“Where are we going, boss?”
“To the Mayor’s house.”
Christianson flipped his sirens on and shot across town, ahead of ambulances and fire trucks, and brought the “Commish” to Carl Schurz Park. The policeman came out of his sentry box to salute Tiger John and open the gate for him. John walked under the blue canopy at the side of the house. He loved to visit Gracie Mansion. It was a grand old house with black shutters on the windows and white porch rails. Sam had three bedrooms for himself. He was the first bachelor Mayor to occupy the house.
Through the front door Johnny went, under the fanlight, with Sammy’s live-in maid to smile at him and ask about his health. “Thank you, Sarah, I’m tiptop.”
“That’s good, Commissioner John.”
“And how is the Man today?”
“He’s bristling,” she said. “It’s them straw ballots. Everybody’s picking Rebecca to win.”
“It’s meaningless stuff,” John said. “He’ll pull through.”
He walked up the winding stairs on the Mayor’s green carpet. It was almost three o’clock, but the Mayor hadn’t risen yet. John stood outside the master bedroom and knocked on the door.
“Come in, for God’s sake.”
Sam was in his underwear. He put pajamas on for his Police Commissioner and returned to bed. He lay under the covers until Sarah arrived with a pot of coffee and sweet rolls for the two bachelor men. He winked at John when Sarah left. An enormous black accounting book poked out of the covers. It was the Mayor’s budget for the coming fiscal year. Sam kicked at the book with both his feet. “Becky Karp says I can’t add or subtract. But it doesn’t take more than ten fingers to know that the City is sinking in shit. Some wizard in the Comptroller’s office is always finding a million here and there … then he loses it the next day … did you run the girlies into the precinct, John?”
“I did.”
Sam fell silent and munched on a sweet roll.
Christ, how do you talk to a Mayor? John finished his coffee, taking care not to break the cup. “Ah,” he said, “you’ll murder Rebecca at the polls.”
But the Mayor wasn’t listening to him. His jaws churned while he stared into the great mirror alongside his bed. Poor old man. Hizzoner can’t sustain a conversation. His memory is on the blink.
John walked out of t
he master bedroom as quietly as he could. He said goodbye to Sarah and thanked her for the coffee and the sweet rolls. Christie was parked near the gate. He had an envelope for Tiger John.
“Who gave you this?”
Christianson held out his hands to indicate the overwhelming breadth of a giant. “It was that rogue cop, O’Toole.”
“O’Toole? How could he tell I was coming to the Mayor’s house?”
Christianson shrugged and pursed his lips.
The PC glared at him, “The Special Prosecutor is on our heels, and you monkey with that whoreboy outside Gracie Mansion?… come on. Take me to the Dingle.”
He opened the envelope, and a bankbook spilled out. John didn’t bother with the sums in the book. Five or six thousand, it was the same to him. They were getting cheeky with the “Commish,” these messenger boys. The giant had followed him to Sammy’s gate! He shielded the bankbook in his palm, so he could peek at that mother of a name. Anna Livia Plurabelle. Go figure out O’Toole and that king of his in Dublin town. John got his bankbooks if he went after whores or not. What in hell were they paying him for? Would the bankbooks come faster and faster, the more Black Marias he sent out? Anna Livia and Molly Bloom.
“The Dingle,” John said, “when do we get to the Dingle?” Then he noticed that the car had stopped.
“Boss, we’ve been sitting here for five minutes.”
“Oh,” John said. He got out of the car, knocked three times, muttered his name, and crept inside with the Dingle Bay boys.
4
HE was that bum again, but he didn’t have a dirty neck, or so much stubble on his face. His cheeks were lean, and he had the suffering look of a suitor. Annie Powell didn’t like it at all. The bum was wearing cologne, an after-shave lotion it was. He would scare anybody away with the dark hollows in his eyes. “Jesus,” she said, laughing at him. “How am I going to earn my keep? Buy me for half an hour, but don’t feed me another lunch. I can’t work on a full stomach.”
Secret Isaac Page 2
