“I’ve had my fill of hospitals. Used to run up to Presbyterian like a religious man. They fluoroscoped me, gave me pills to eat. Nothing happened. And I’ve been growing fond of my worm.”
Isaac begged her to let him wash up. Jennifer refused. Her body gave him the chills. She didn’t have a flaw on her back. Her thighs had a strange burnish in Isaac’s room. He loved the circles her nipples made, pinkish mounds. What was Melvin’s wife doing in his room? Why wasn’t Pears with her, his head resting in her groin? Her low, mother’s breasts didn’t bother him at all. It was amazing to Isaac. He moved in her with a gentleness, a slow, soft rhythm that he’d never had in his possession before. Was the worm bridling him, holding him back? Was it that creature who was making Jennifer Pears, not him? With its own smooth motion, its worm’s rocking parts? Do worms have pricks and tongues? Isaac wanted her out of his room.
“Late,” he said. “An appointment with the Mayor. Christ, we have to be at this synagogue by six.” It was no lie. The little Irish Mayor had to crawl to the Hebrews for votes, run to obscure shuls in the far boroughs. He’d already lost the Irish vote. The Irish loved Rebecca. She was a former beauty queen, and she had a loud voice, wit, humor, and pishogue. She was five feet eight and could tell you a good story. His Honor was nearly a dwarf. Five feet one without his shoes. He was a Party loyalist, a bureaucrat who could barely put two sentences together. He’d had his great rise three and a half years ago. He was chairman of the Potholes Complaint Board, a member of the Landmarks Commission, and an unpaid governor of the Manhattan Shelter for Women. Sam had never finished high school. He seemed perfect for the Mayor’s job. The pols liked his mumness, his devotion to their cause. The other candidates, six growling men, were chewing at each other’s throat. The Dems turned to Sam. They rewarded him for fifty years of labor. He’d carried milk pails for Party bosses, lit the fires in Democratic clubrooms, slept on his knees in City Hall. But he arrived at Gracie Mansion in the wrong year. “Hizzoner” had a corpse in his arms. The City died on Sammy Dunne. It was fighting bankruptcy and a terrible loss of jobs.
“Hizzoner” wouldn’t step out in his own car. He was afraid people would jeer at him. So Isaac sent a limousine to collect the Mayor at Gracie Mansion. Jennifer watched the First Dep get into his synagogue clothes. She had more affection for Isaac the bum. She kissed him goodbye and left him to struggle with his cuffs. The limousine was waiting for Isaac outside the hotel. Mayor Sam was hiding in the back seat. He didn’t question Isaac’s choice of hotels. He might bully Handsome John Rathgar, the Police Commissioner, but he had absolute faith in Sheeny Isaac.
The car took them to Hollis, Queens. Sam and Isaac had to engage a shul full of retirees, pensioners and their wives who were worried about their own shrinking revenues, crime in their housing projects, and the worth of a Mayor who wouldn’t come out of his mansion. They were for Rebecca of the Rockaways. They were indulging Isaac and Sam out of boredom, anger, and frustration. The Mayor had nothing to say. His tongue lolled in his mouth while he whispered to Isaac on the podium. “Jesus God, will you save us now?” Isaac saw the bitterness of their plight. An Irish Mayor and an apostate in a house full of Jews. Isaac had never prayed in a synagogue. But he and Sam had to wear skullcaps over their brains. Isaac became the good policeman for Mayor Sam, but question after question was beginning to break his hump. He had pity for these old men and women. They were stroked at election time, and then forgotten. That was the law of politics. Functionaries ran the City, men and women in gray buildings, who didn’t even know there was a synagogue in Hollis, and wouldn’t have cared. Rebecca would scream about more golden age clubs, but the same functionaries would rule whether she got in or not. Still, Isaac had to lapse into petty lies. He invented master plans for Mayor Sam Dunne: more cops to walk old women to the bank, patrols to discourage baby thieves, police sergeants to talk about better burglar alarms. The worm was biting him fierce. It had little tolerance for Isaac’s shit.
Then the auditorium mellowed. It had no idea of Isaac’s apostasy. The synagogue figured it was talking Jew to Jew. One old woman mentioned their Nobel laureate. What did Isaac think of Moses Herzog and Saul Bellow? All Isaac could remember about cuckold Moses was that he liked to fornicate belly to belly, face to face. Thoughts of Jennifer Pears crept into him. He had a sudden desire to ravage every inch of her, to lose that gentleness the worm had thrust on him, and eat her out like a crazy Chinaman. His Honor, who was incapable of reading any book, nudged Isaac. “We have them now. Tell them about Herzog’s Bellow.”
Isaac mouthed some blather about Herzog and the modern Jew, and he and Sam were permitted to go. The worm dug at Isaac in a miserable fashion. He had to keep wrenching from side to side in the limousine. But Sam was happy. “You got them,” he said, “you got them with Herzog’s Bellow.”
Something was drilling in Isaac’s skull. “Your Honor, you must know every Irish society in New York … does any of them carry a member named Dermott Bride? A rich man, a man who might make contributions here and there.”
Sam wasn’t listening. He kept singing, “Herzog’s Bellow, Herzog’s Bellow,” and Isaac thought, he’ll lose the primary mumbling that song. And Molly would probably get a kiss from Mr. Bellow and throw Isaac to the dogs.
8
HE wasn’t wrong about Jenny. She didn’t come to his hotel again. Ah, she’s found another primitive guy. Jesus, with a body like that? And those green eyes. He looked for her at John Jay College. There was no green-eyed lady taking down his words. His lectures fell to shit. He stopped caring if the Mayor won or lost. He had only Dermott Bride to consider. His deputies rang him at the hotel. They had no news of Dermott, but Melvin Pears had invited him to a party, a party for Rebecca, at her campaign headquarters in an abandoned Dodge showroom on West Fifty-third. Isaac thought, pish on Becky Karp. He wasn’t going to lend himself as a whipping boy to her campaign, appear as the curiosity cop, so Rebecca and her people could get at Mayor Sam through him. But Jennifer might be at the party. Jenny of the flawless back. Isaac arrived at the Dodge showroom in dungarees.
The showroom was packed. All the movie stars had come out for Ms. Rebecca. Streisand; Dustin Hoffman and his wife. The First Dep went unrecognized until Rebecca grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled on him. “Isaac,” she said, “Isaac.” Even the worm could feel one of Becky’s shoulder grips. Isaac was squeezed into her like a bunny rabbit. It was a calculated move on Rebecca’s part. She wanted him near enough so she could whisper into his throat. “Cocksucker,” she said. This was the Rebecca Isaac enjoyed. “I’ll stick your balls in a jar of honey and give them to the rats for a lick … Fuckface, why did you marry yourself to a sinking man? You’re not supposed to be a fool.”
Isaac wiggled out of Rebecca’s bear hug and kissed her on the mouth. “Senile he is. There are days Sam can’t remember his name …”
“Then come over to us,” she said.
Isaac smiled, but his lips were narrow, and Rebecca realized she’d just been given a Judas kiss.
“Cunt, he’s a better Mayor than you’ll ever be.”
He would have gone out, tunneled under Streisand’s kinky hair on his way to the door, but he discovered Jennifer standing with one of Rebecca’s aides, a boy with red eyebrows. They were smiling, talking under their breath. What hotel did he live at? Did the boy have red hair on his chest? Would he like to borrow Isaac’s worm? Would she fuck him in a doorway? Isaac bullied through a crowd of campaigners, and snatched Jennifer away from the boy. “My savior,” she said. “With the iron grip … what synagogue do you have on your agenda today?… Isaac, my husband’s about three feet behind us. Mel. Do you remember him?”
“He won’t notice,” Isaac said. The First Dep was in a burly mood. “He’s fixing strategies for Rebecca.”
So they walked down to Isaac’s hotel. He was into her body before she could get her panties off. It was a kind of friendly rape. He licked her armpits, filled her navel with spit, and sucked betwee
n her legs with a brutal energy. He left marks on her thighs, souvenirs for Melvin to look at.
“Isaac, why are you so angry at me?”
“Who knows?”
Was he getting even with the worm, showing it the authentic Isaac, who could take any woman into his bed. He began to eat her nipples like a goddamn baby. She stroked his head, held it there, and the worm had screwed him again. The lust was gone. “Stay with me,” he said. “Tonight.”
“Isaac, how can I?… I have a four-year-old at home … and Mel.”
“Telephone the kid. Tell him Dick Tracy will play with him tomorrow if he goes to sleep. Mel can take care of himself.”
Her green eyes were throwing off that beautiful gray dust again. He put her in a cab. She kissed him thickly, with her fingers in his ear. It wasn’t a joke. He was losing his guts to Jennifer Pears. He’d better find himself a bimbo fast, a girl who would let him concentrate on Dermott while he rolled her over and fucked her from behind. He blackened his face with charcoal and got into his bum’s clothes. The First Dep was dying for a fight. He’d roam the streets like a crazed animal, slapping pimps, cops, or tourists. You’d have a hard time arresting Isaac, no matter what outfit he wore. The worm could tear at him. Isaac wasn’t going to be ruled by a little snake in his belly.
He had the customer he wanted. A man was chatting with Annie Powell, a timid john from the look of him. Was she settling on a price? Isaac could rip the scalp off his ears, give him a beauty treatment he wouldn’t forget. But Annie didn’t go with the john. Something had scared him off. It wasn’t Isaac. His mania couldn’t have been obvious from a block away. It was someone else. A horse of a man. Tiny Jim O’Toole. Jamey was bending over her now. Isaac drew close. That horse wasn’t making her smile. He had his huge knuckles in the waistband of her whore’s shirt.
“O’Toole,” Isaac said. “Jamey. You ought to be nicer to King Dermott’s bride. If you don’t put your hand away, I’ll have to chew it off.”
It was a ridiculous bluff. O’Toole could have sat Isaac on top of the lamppost and left him there for the fire trucks to bring him down on a ladder. But he took his knuckles out of Annie’s shirt.
“Isaac, be kind to the Irish. Don’t meddle. Annie, she belongs to another man. Ask her yourself.”
Jamey whistled with his knuckles in his pockets, winked at Annie, and stepped into the gutter. Cars stopped for him. No one could be sure how his bumpers would fare against a lad who was six feet seven.
Annie was growling at Isaac. “Who are you?… Jesus, can’t you play on the next block? And why do you have that black shit on your face? You’re comical, you know that … with your questions and your little bottles of champagne.”
She was sobbing now. “Don’t I have enough without a pest like you?… you’re trouble to me …”
“Annie, I could help … if you’d tell me what it was O’Toole wants.”
“Wants?… he has regards to me from somebody I know.”
“Dermott?”
But she wouldn’t talk to him. And Isaac had to gather up his bum’s pants at the waist (he was growing skinnier by the hour), and skunk off to his hotel.
9
WAS it a code name? Dermott Bride. Was Dermott the secret hero of Londonderry? Using his whores’ profits to collect money for the “rebels” of Northern Ireland, with Annie the deposed queen of the Provisional IRA? Isaac had his men infiltrate the tough Irish bars around Marble Hill. There was no Dermott Bride or Annie Powell attached to the Irish Republican Army. But Isaac was a stubborn man. He had his agents burrow everywhere. They went into the First Dep’s own files. They came up with a memorandum from Ned O’Roarke, the old First Deputy Commissioner, whose death had put Isaac into office. It took them a week to ferret out that pink slip with one sentence written on it eighteen years ago. “Get Isaac to help little Dermott.” Isaac was horrified. He couldn’t mistake the scrawling hand of Ned O’Roarke. O’Roarke had been Isaac’s rabbi. He’d sponsored him, brought him into the First Dep’s territories, built him up. What did Ned have to do with “little Dermott”? The worm was erasing Isaac’s memory, that’s it.
He dialed Kathleen in Florida. It was four A.M. The wife had to be in bed with one of her suitors. “Kate,” he mumbled, “did we ever know a boy named Dermott?”
He had to ask her again. She yawned into the phone. “Isaac, go fuck yourself.”
So he was left with a Dermott he might have known, but didn’t know now. Ned O’Roarke wouldn’t have launched Dermott as a pimp. It couldn’t have been Ned who made a “king” of Dermott Bride.
Isaac had Jennifer to console him three days a week. She was the only woman who could drive Dermott out of him. The worm never pinched Isaac when he was with Jennifer Pears.
But he had other pulls on him. “Hizzoner” was growing desperate. The Daily News vouched Sam would only get one vote in ten. He was told to remove himself from the primary lists. “Hizzoner” refused. He went on more excursions with Isaac. Then he had a heart attack in Gracie Mansion. He was carried to the hospital across the street. Rebecca sent a full page of condolences to the New York Times. People were already calling her Mayor Karp.
Isaac felt sorry for old Sam, but he was glad he didn’t have to parrot little lies in churches, shuls, and social clubs. He did more strolling as Isaac the bum. Annie seemed to have fled from her corner. Lazar came out of his pornography shop to chat with Isaac. “Sidel, stop dreaming about that woman … I can get you a beauty with poems written on her chest.”
“Lazar, you didn’t leave your shop to become my pimp … what happened to Annie Powell?”
“She’s in the hospital … Roosevelt. They found her unconscious last night … somebody stepped on her face.”
Isaac hailed a patrol car. “Get me to Roosevelt Hospital, quick.” The cops were ready to laugh at the bum who was giving orders. “Call my office on your radio. I’m First Deputy Sidel.”
They ran up to Roosevelt with their sirens on. He found Annie in some rear beggar’s ward. The nurses couldn’t understand what this bum was doing with two cops. The cops took their eyes off Annie Powell. Her face was one, huge, distorted puff. The lips were split apart. The “D” on her cheek had lost its continuity. Its pith was broken and submerged. Dermott had erased himself from Annie. “Get her out of this fucking hole,” Isaac shouted to the resident in charge of the ward. “Put her in a private room.”
“Hey,” the resident said, trying not to look at Isaac’s baggy pants.
“Prick, it’s Police business … and stop blinking at me. I’ll pay for the room.”
The patrol car brought him up to Marble Hill. Isaac burst into Martin McBride’s eight-room flat. The old bagman was having dinner with a covey of nephews, nieces, and his wife. Isaac lifted him off the floor in front of everybody. The nephews weren’t much good. They shrank from the mad bum who was shaking their uncle up and down.
“Martin, you tell me where Dermott is, or I’ll squash you into a piece of shit.”
“Dublin,” Martin said, riding against Isaac’s shirt. “The nephew’s in Dublin town.”
“What’s his address?”
“The Shelbourne. St. Stephen’s Green.”
“Wasn’t one scar enough for him? Did he order O’Toole to smash both sides of her face?”
“I don’t know, sir. I swear to Christ. Dermott never talks to me …”
Isaac didn’t return to the hotel. He went down to his monk’s corner at Centre Street. He sat in the dark, his fingers rubbing under his nose. The king’s in Dublin. Isaac had to murder him. It didn’t matter that there was no logic to it. The creature was purring in his belly. That’s all the encouragement a man could need. Isaac still had a cop’s head. What did Annie Powell mean to him? There were other scarred whores in the world, plenty of them. He hadn’t slept with this Annie, hadn’t touched her. And she’d mocked his offerings of champagne. But he was already smitten by that letter on her face, Dermott’s mark. He could have had his own inspecto
rs swipe O’Toole off the street. Five or ten of Isaac’s deputies for each of Jamey’s arms. They would have unwired him. But Isaac would fix Jamey himself, when he got back from Dublin. Jamey was only a vassal to that king. It was Dermott Bride who had stepped on Annie’s face. He was the lad Isaac wanted. He’d already booked a flight with Aer Lingus, crazy as it was. Isaac was leaving tomorrow.
He wasn’t going to Dublin as the great Isaac Sidel. A trusted deputy might have doctored a passport for him. Isaac could have flown under any name. But he didn’t want to involve his office. He used a crooked engraver, Duckworth, a thief that Isaac had kept out of jail. He had him smuggled into Centre Street with his bag of tools. The engraver was nervous. He liked thirty-six hours to “make” a passport. And he preferred his own darkroom off Canal Street, where he could exercise his artistry without any pressure from the First Dep.
“Isaac, are you sure there’s a camera downstairs?”
“Duckie, why do I have to repeat myself? You’ve been here before. The photo unit was always in the basement.”
“But how do we know what equipment the bastards left behind?”
“That’s what we’re going to find out.”
Isaac grabbed a flashlight and they marched down three flights. Rats scurried around their legs. The smell of rat shit was enough to destroy a man. Isaac kept the engraver on his feet. Duckworth had his camera. The photo unit was intact.
The engraver took half a dozen passports out of his pocket. They were samples of his own work, names he’d invented. All he needed was a photograph of Isaac to go with any one of them. He would legitimize the photograph, fix it to the passport with the State Department seal he carried in his bag. Duckworth rummaged through the passports. “I can give you Larry Fagin O’Neill, Marvin Worth, Ira Goldberg … Isaac, they’re practically real people. We’re just gonna throw one of them your face.”
“Keep them for your other clients, Duckie. I have a name. Moses Herzog.”
Secret Isaac Page 4
