The engraver was heartsore. “Why Moses Herzog? That will triple my work. I’ll have to start from scratch. Fagin O’Neill isn’t good enough?”
But Isaac was without mercy. Moses Herzog. That’s what it would have to be.
Part
Two
10
THE Irish stewardesses were gentle with this businessman, philosopher, poet from the City of New York. They fed him coffee and chocolate mints. The worm adored the taste of mint. Moses was asleep when they arrived at Shannon. Passengers disembarked. Then the plane took off for Dublin town.
His baggage was light. He figured on two or three days to dispose of his business with Dermott Bride. They wouldn’t miss him at his office. Isaac had disappeared for much longer periods than that.
The cab ride to the Shelbourne cost him nearly three pounds in Irish money. It was a hotel with white pillars, a blue marquee, statuettes holding lanterns over their heads, tall windows, and a white roof. The Shelbourne sat opposite a long, handsome park. St. Stephen’s Green. Isaac couldn’t see the park from his window. But it still cost him twenty pounds a night. He’d have to kill Dermott and get out of here, or borrow from his pension money to stay alive.
He had no idea what Dermott looked like. Would the king materialize on the staircase and present himself, like a fucking Druid? You couldn’t tell what magic Dermott owned in Dublin. But Moses had the rottenest luck. A man latched on to him in the lobby. It was Marshall Berkowitz, the dean of freshmen at Columbia College and vice-president of the James Joyce Society. Marshall had been Isaac’s English prof during his one semester at college. He made a pilgrimage to Dublin every year to walk the streets of Leopold Bloom. How was Isaac supposed to know that Marshall always stopped at the Shelbourne? He had a new, young wife. She had bangs over her eyes, this Sylvia Berkowitz, powerful calves, and a thin, rabbity smile. Something wasn’t right with her. Had she taken a graduate course with Marsh, fallen in love with him while they plowed through Finnegans Wake? It must have been a devastating courtship. Marshall could capture any man or woman with that purity he had for Joyce. He’d converted Isaac after the first day of class. That was thirty years ago. Isaac had wept at the opening of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Moocows coming down the road. Molly Byrnes and her lemon platt. He was a barbarian from Manhattan and the Bronx. He hadn’t known such language could exist. He followed Marshall everywhere, begged him to explain the meaning of this page or that. Isaac walked the campus with a fever in his eye. It couldn’t last. Isaac’s father deserted his family during Christmas, stole off to Paris in middle age to teach himself how to paint, a fur manufacturer with a craze in his head to become the new Matisse. Isaac had to leave school and help support the family.
He didn’t read Joyce after that. He married an Irish woman who worked in real estate, four years older than himself. He became a cop. It was Kathleen who introduced him to First Deputy Commissioner O’Roarke, Kathleen who connected him to all the Irish rabbis who ran the Police Department of New York. It was her Irishness that made him a big cop. Now he had Marshall and Marshall’s wife, both of whom had unmasked him on his first day in Dublin.
“Isaac,” the dean said. “For God’s sake. What’s a commissioner like you doing here?”
Isaac had an “agreement” with Marshall Berkowitz. From time to time he would recommend young boys for Columbia College, lads who were the sons or nephews of some cop. Isaac would interview them, and pass on his feelings to Marsh. He had an instinct for who would survive at Columbia and who would not. Marsh always went by Isaac’s word.
“Isaac, how the hell are you?”
The First Dep had to shut him up in the Shelbourne lounge. “Marsh, I’m on a caper, please … you’ll have to call me Moses.”
The dean’s wife began to laugh. She took those bangs away from her eyes. There were blackish lines around them. Sylvia Berkowitz couldn’t have slept a lot.
“Goddamn,” Marshall said. “Moses, come with us. You’ll do your cop stuff later.”
“Where are we going?”
Berkowitz smiled. “To Number Seven Eccles Street.”
Thirty years couldn’t wipe away Ulysses. Isaac knew that book. Number 7 Eccles Street was where Joyce had dropped Leopold Bloom.
“Moses, the Irish are a miserable people. A landmark, a literary property that’s impossible to duplicate, and they molest the place. It’s a shell of a house … but it still exists.”
So Isaac borrowed a sweater from the dean, and they went about the city. Moses had his jet lag. He couldn’t remember buildings, monuments, and stores except a McDonald’s hamburger joint. Trinity College was Only an old wall that bent around a street. They crossed the Liffey at O’Connell Bridge. Joyce could have his river and his quays. The currents seemed pissy to Isaac. Then it was O’Connell Street and the Gresham Hotel. “The Gresham’s gone down,” Marshall said. “They frisked us the last time we went in for tea.”
These mutterings made no sense to Isaac. His ears were freezing, but he wasn’t going to buy a hat in August. It was a turn to the left and up another street, narrower, with a row of gray houses. Then a turn to the right, a high street again with broken signboards and pubs with blue walls that had begun to chip and peel. A jump to the left and they were on Eccles Street, in what had to be a bitten part of town, a much lesser Dublin than Stephen’s Green. Marshall led him by the hand to Bloom’s house. The roof had been lopped off. The windows were boarded. Weeds showed through the cracks in the wood. The front door was torn out and replaced with ribbons of tin. The cellar was overgrown with harsh, bending flowers that were beginning to stink. The steps had mostly turned to rubble. Marshall swayed in front of Bloom’s ravaged house. He was a heavy man, with a thickness behind his ears. The dean was about to blubber. Isaac heard a dry, hacking sound.
“Poldy,” he said. “Poldy Bloom … God save us from the Irish and ourselves. We don’t deserve James Joyce.”
The Irish could destroy Dublin for all Isaac cared, long as they held Dermott Bride. Eccles Street was like portions of the Bronx. Bombed-out territories and a few pubs. Marshall recovered himself. He wanted to drag Moses to a second landmark. A chemist’s shop important to Bloom. Sylvia rescued Isaac. “Marsh, why don’t you go? I’ll take Isaac back to the hotel.”
Marshall shrugged and kissed his wife, and he was gone from Eccles Street. Sylvia began to curse her husband. “Did you ever see such a big fat wobbly ass?… he was putting on a show for you.”
“His crying in front of Bloom’s house?”
“That’s not it. He always cries.”
Isaac looked at Mrs. Berkowitz. He was getting used to her sleepless eyes. Moses Herzog muttered to himself. He promised the worm he wouldn’t cuckold Dean Ber kowitz. Swear on Dermott’s life. Sylvia took him on another route. They didn’t pass O’Connell Street. They were in a goddamn alley. Isaac couldn’t have told you whether they’d crossed the Liffey or not. Sylvia’s skirt was up. He had her against the roughened wall of some poorman’s lane. He thought they’d get arrested on account of her screams. Sylvia could move against a wall like no other woman. She was wet, wet, wet, but Moses had no feeling in his prick. Was it the worm’s doing? He’d have an operation, magical surgery that could cut that bastard out of him. Isaac had a revelation at the wall. He wasn’t fucking Sylvia. Her hunger had nothing to do with him. Isaac had a terrible, crazy, killing need for Jennifer Pears. He hadn’t even said goodbye to her. Just got on a plane. To avenge a whore with Dermott’s mark on her. Bouncing into Sylvia cursed him with visions of Jennifer’s body. Was it a kind of punishment? Moses’ hell? Why couldn’t he keep away from other men’s wives?
Marsh was at the Shelbourne, drinking cider with lemon peel, when Sylvia brought him in. The dean should have been in a darker mood. Isaac had Sylvia’s smell all over his pants. A school of Dublin orphans could have sensed they’d been out fucking in the streets. But the dean had come back from his landmark, and he wouldn’t chastise his wife. “Moses, gu
ess who’s living here at the Shelbourne with us?”
“Who?”
“Dermott McBride.”
Isaac was prepared to kill. A dean of freshman had more avenues to King Dermott than the First Deputy of New York.
“Marsh, how did you get to know little Dermott?”
“Are you crazy? You’re the one who introduced him to me.”
“I led you to Dermott?” Isaac said.
“He couldn’t have gotten into Columbia without your vote.”
“I thought Dermott went to Yale.”
“He did. He left us after one semester … like you.”
Isaac scratched his ear. “I interviewed so many lads for Columbia. I can’t remember them all.”
“Dermott had a miserable record … but you were so fierce about him. And you were right … never met a boy who could plunge into Ulysses like that. Dermott had the gift. But he’s Irish, of course. And now he’s a millionaire. Has a whole wing at the hotel, a wing for himself.”
“And six bodyguards,” Sylvia Berkowitz said.
“Where’s that wing of his?” Isaac asked.
“East of the elevator. On the fifth floor.”
Isaac excused himself. He strolled up to the fifth floor. The Shelbourne had royal banisters and rugs, with gold leaning posts on the rails. Fuck the costs. He would park at no other hotel in Dublin town. The fifth floor was full of little wings. Isaac couldn’t tell east from west. He recognized a man standing behind a closed fire door. It was a retired cop, Timothy Snell, who had once been a sergeant with the Chief Inspector’s office. He went up to the old sergeant. Snell didn’t open that fire door for Isaac. The First Dep had to mumble through the glass.
“Tim, do me a favor. Tell the king I’d like a word with him.”
Old Timothy was playing deaf. “Isaac, what king is that? All the kings I know are dead.”
Isaac spoke Dermott’s name into the fire door.
“Dermott isn’t expecting any guests. But if he wants you, we’ll knock on your door.”
“Timmy, who told him I was staying here?”
“Nobody. We bribed a porter. And we figured Mr. Moses Herzog of New York City had to be Isaac Sidel …”
“He knew I was coming, didn’t he?”
“Not at all.”
Isaac skulked down to his room. He did have a knock on his door. Close to midnight. It was Sylvia Berkowitz, wearing a raincoat with nothing underneath.
“Where’s Marsh?”
“Asleep,” she said.
“What if he wakes up? He won’t think you’re with Dermott. He’ll come to my room. I don’t know how Marsh will take to having three in a bed.”
“He’d never notice. And he won’t wake up. He likes his dreams too much …”
“Does he dream of Number Seven Eccles Street?”
“No,” she said. “He dreams of fucking his wife.”
The Berkowitzes were too profound for him. It was much easier to lie on his bed with Sylvia. She left her raincoat on. She nibbled Isaac a bit and then climbed on top of him. She writhed with a fury, and Isaac felt like some wooden soldier with a great toy prick that could be sucked on and used as a hilt. She wasn’t oblivious of him. She fondled his bald spot, kissed him with devotion, but he couldn’t keep up with that hunger she had. He was thinking of his daughter, her many marriages, her wildness for men. And Jennifer Pears? Was her good husband going down on her this minute? Or was Dublin time confusing him? Sylvia’s writhing stopped. She fell asleep on Isaac’s shoulder. Women, crazy women, were soaking his head. He dreamt of Annie’s scar. The scar had moved to her belly in Isaac’s dream. She had an “S” on her, for Sidel. The “S” began to wiggle. Isaac woke up, his legs kicking out in some kind of panic. Sylvia wasn’t there.
11
HE had breakfast with the Berkowitzes in the Shelbourne’s Saddle Room. The Dean had kippers, bacon, haddock, eggs, one of Isaac’s sausages, most of Sylvia’s ham. Sylvia bumped Isaac under the table with both her knees. Isaac had to beg the waiters for toasted whole wheat bread. They weren’t impolite. “Sorry, sir, brown bread doesn’t toast easily.” He was beginning to wonder if the king took his breakfast in his rooms. Then, at half nine, while Marshall was stealing scraps from Sylvia’s plate, Dermott came down to eat with his bodyguards. They occupied four tables. You couldn’t mistake the king. It was Dermott and six retired New York cops. The calm on Whores’ Row began to make sense for Isaac. Dermott had his own rabbis in the Department. He couldn’t have kept the nigger gangs from warring with each other over all that revenue unless Dermott had some fat cop in his sleeve.
His vassals ate like pigs around him. Dermott had coffee and white toast. He was a dark and handsome man. He couldn’t have been over thirty-five. He had a stronger chin than Isaac. And no bald spot. His hair was black as Moses. It had a lovely sheen in the Saddle Room. But it wasn’t marks of physical beauty that bit at Isaac. Dermott was a thinking man. You could see the grooves and gutters in his brow. His eyes had more clarity than those six vassals who ate with him. That was Dermott’s power to attract. And he didn’t have a worm to give him sunken cheeks.
The First Dep could feel some pressure on his arm.
“Moses, can I have that sausage if you’re not going to finish it?”
“Absolutely,” Isaac said. “And I’m not Moses anymore. Half of Dublin knows I’m here.”
Dermott got up from the table. His vassals had to leave their kippers because of him. He nodded once to Marshall and his wife, but he had nothing for his old sponsor, Isaac Sidel. The First Dep was grateful that the Berkowitzes were going on a trip to the outskirts of Dublin for the morning at least. Howth Castle and Sandycove. Isaac begged to God that Marsh and his wife would lose themselves somewhere. The First Dep needed time to stalk, to fix Dermott’s hours in his head, find a schedule, so that he would know when to leap, and he couldn’t do anything with Sylvia pulling on his pants.
But he had a hard time looking for weak spots in Dermott. The king kept to his rooms. The vassals had a porter bring up his lunch. About four in the afternoon he went down to eat his tea. The king’s party occupied a little nest of chairs in a corner of the lounge that was furthest from the windows. Was someone other than Isaac after the king? At five he went out for a walk in St. Stephen’s Green. It wasn’t much of a stroll. He kept to the gazebo on the near side of the pond. He was back at the hotel by five-fifteen. At eight he went out again. It was to a little Chinese restaurant on Merrion Row, the Red Ruby, a block and a half from his hotel. He was up in his wing at the Shelbourne before nine. An Irish Cinderella. Did his vassals tuck him in?
Isaac had his first bit of luck. The Berkowitzes were stranded in Sandycove. He could follow Dermott unmolested for a second day. The king’s schedule didn’t vary very much. Breakfast at the Saddle Room. Lunch upstairs. Tea. A stroll near the pond. Dinner at the Red Ruby. And good night.
How could Isaac get to him, and where? He couldn’t make it out of Dublin in less than a week. The Berkowitzes came back. Sylvia would have drifted into Isaac’s room without her underpants if the First Dep hadn’t taken to the streets on that third day. The girls weren’t pretty. They had freckles everywhere and their waists weren’t high enough to please him. He was crazy about long-legged girls. The men seemed to have a dumb look around their eyes and a grimness in their cheeks. A nation of halfwits. Isaac wasn’t fair. He had mingled with too many American Irish. He couldn’t get along with them. His marriage to Kathleen had been twenty years of strife. The Irish were crazy, in Dublin and New York.
He rumbled back to the Shelbourne and sat in the lounge, where he saw an Irish beauty. She must have been a blueblooded wench. She didn’t have much of a brogue. Was she one of the Anglo-Irish who had ruled Dublin for centuries? She was with a perfectly tailored man about Isaac’s age. They drank white coffee and muttered things that escaped the First Dep. They could talk without moving their lips, these Anglo-Irish. The woman had a long face and hot green eyes. She neve
r looked at Isaac. The First Dep felt shabby in his clothes. He had no miracle tailor. And it wouldn’t have mattered. The best of coats would have wrinkled on his body. The worm was quiet. Isaac trudged upstairs.
He couldn’t sleep. He was going to get through that fire door hours before breakfast and squeeze Dermott Bride. Six vassals? Isaac would take them one by one. His only weapon was a hairbrush with a powerful handle and a hard black spine. If he smacked you between the eyes with it, Isaac could put you to sleep. He hid from the porters going up and down the stairs. He got to Dermott’s floor. He could tell east from west tonight. He didn’t see any vassals behind the fire door fronting Dermott’s wing. He smuggled his way in. Six hands must have grabbed at him from different rooms. Isaac was sitting on his ass. Old Tim Snell wasn’t laughing at him. “Laddie, it’s an odd vacation for you … did you come with blessings from Mayor Sam? We hear that dunce is in the hospital. Is it money you want from Dermott? We aint poor, but tell us why we should give a penny to you?”
“Dermott can keep his whores’ gelt. There are enough fingers in the pie. I’d like to ask him about Annie Powell.”
Old Tim crouched next to Isaac. “Oh, you’re the world in New York City, Isaac, me dear, but you couldn’t sell a fart in Dublin. If you ever say ‘Annie’ to Dermott, you’ll have yourself the grandest Irish funeral. We’ll give you something to remember for a long time.”
“Thanks, Timmy, but I’m curious why Dermott leaves his signature on a girl’s face and then hires a thug to wipe it off.”
All six hands grabbed at Isaac and pitched him through the fire door. “Isaac, it would be a pity if we had to throw you out a window … we’re respected in this hotel. Have your vacation, and don’t you bother us.”
Sylvia was under Isaac’s covers when he returned to his room. He didn’t fight her off. Those six hands on Isaac must have livened him. His passion surprised the girl. Isaac licked all her parts. But it was Jennifer’s nipples he was feeling in his mouth. The king must have put a spell on him, else the worm was doing its work. Fifty-one years old, and the schmuck was falling in love. Sylvia took his passion, but she wasn’t Isaac’s fool.
Secret Isaac Page 5
