It was only twenty blocks from Chelsea to Annie’s room at the Lord Byron. But Robinson Crusoe couldn’t run or crawl those twenty blocks. How can you find your mother’s window with holes in your head?
The Fisherman was watching the streets. He’s not in Connemara. The salmon don’t bite this time of year. The king should have listened to Jamey O’Toole. But Dermott was always the businessman. Dermott, he’s a rat bastard, he is. Didn’t I work for him? He’d dummy up the evidence. Or get his lads to knock you on the ear. He poses as the quiet one. But he’s the killer, all right. Don’t believe him. If he puts us in two cities, he’ll be able to pick us off.
The king sent little James back to Ameriky. O’Toole had to help uncle Martin collect the rent. It all turned sour when Annie arrived. No one had to tell him the history of that mark on her face. It was Dermott who gave her the cut. Sweet Jesus, how did he lose his own wife?
Then the Fisherman got into the act. His cronies beat her with their sticks. The donkey went looking for Coote’s little old men. He found three of those lads at the Kilkenny Inn on West Twenty-fourth. He shoved their skinny behinds into a booth. “That’s lovely what you did to Annie Powell. It’s kind of you to go for the face. I’ll make you dumb in a hurry if you don’t explain to me what it’s about? I thought we had a bargain with Coote. Why did he attack the girl?”
“Jamey darlin’,” the little people said, squashed inside their booth. “That’s ancient history. The king threw her out months ago. Dermott doesn’t want her on the street. So what’s she to you?”
He pushed their flimsy heads all the way under the booth. “She’s a friend of mine. Keep your bats and sticks to yourselves, understand? I’ll leave your brains stuck to the wall if Annie has another accident.”
“Dermott won’t like his donkey boy meddling in Coote’s affairs.”
“To hell with Dermott, and to hell with you.”
He tapped them once on the skull to give the lads something to dream about. Then Jamey walked over to the house where he lived with his mother. Two detectives were hunched in the park across the street. There was a third blue-eyed wonder in the alley at the back of the house. These blue-eyed boys were from the First Deputy’s office. They belonged to Isaac the Pure. Was Isaac working for Coote? Jesus, the whole Force was under the Fisherman’s net.
Jamey trudged uptown. Detectives followed him in their green cars. Coote’s people loitered on every other block. They winked at O’Toole. There’s a message in the crackle of an old man’s eye. The donkey had been sold out. He was an expendable item to Coote. They would get another boy to collect their black rent. It was silly to run from Manhattan. If Isaac had gone in with Coote, they would have their lads checking for him at all the depots. He could smash one or two of them, but he couldn’t beat up the City of New York. Oh, it was a merry Police Department when one commissioner danced with the next. They’d be dancing on Jamey’s head soon enough. He didn’t have much of a choice. The donkey went to hide in Annie’s rooming house, because it was a dark, ratty place where cops didn’t like to go.
The donkey’s instincts were correct. Isaac and the little people kept away from Annie’s room. Jamey had a life of it. He drank wine and ale from bottles in the window. His jaw was gripped with patches of hair. His shirt crumpled on his back. He became Robinson Crusoe in less than a month.
It pained him to watch Annie scuttle into the room with her johns. Such geeky old men, sailors from two or three wars ago, rotting in their winter vests. The donkey was obliged to wait in the hall. He would curse the king on those occasions. Dermott, you gave my ass to Coote and fucked Annie girl.
He couldn’t last in the dark forever, with the odors of Annie’s clientele in his beard. The poor girl was always drunk. Whiskey drunk. The whiskey gave her the fortitude and the soft burn she needed to entertain those crumbling sailors, sing to them and part her legs. The donkey had a rage in him. He wasn’t going to shrivel because of Isaac and Coote McNeill. He combed his beard. Robinson Crusoe was getting ready for the street.
Daylight hurt his eyes. He could have been indoors for centuries. He wasn’t used to crowds of shuffling men and women. They seemed moronic to Jamey, with their hard, fixed faces and translucent ears. They were staring into some uneasy eternity inside themselves that made him want to pick them up and hurl them into the gutters.
Robinson Crusoe left them alone. His education had come in the dark. The king was dumb, swear to God. He’d allowed Coote to jockey him into a hotel wing that was more a prison than a home. Dermott had his Alcatraz in seven large rooms. Coote provided the jailers. Ancient cops with kidney stones, borrowed from the Retired Sergeants Association. Hearing aids and heart murmurs. But they’d served under good commissioners. They were trained to kick a man to death. Lovely boys. The king had given his guts over to them, when he had his Annie and his O’Toole.
Jamey gritted his teeth. The young dudes were out. They tried to feather him with leaflets from all the massage parlors. He knocked the dudes to the side. He stuck his face in windows. People shrank from him. But the cops couldn’t get under his beard. Those blue-eyed wonders who walked in and out of cafes scorned this Robinson Crusoe. They didn’t connect him with their image of that strongman O’Toole. The donkey was free to cruise.
He traveled down to the Fisherman’s territories inside the Kilkenny Inn and picked a table near the door. The little people, Coote’s old men, didn’t recognize him. They sat on their stools, looking past Robinson Crusoe. He sneered at them.
“Bring the Fisherman here.”
The little sergeants squeezed their eyes. “What’s this?”
“Never mind. Just get me that old fart.”
They complained to the bartender. “He stinks, this bag of garbage. Who invited him in?”
“I don’t need invites. I’m your loving friend. The O’Toole.”
They smiled at Robinson Crusoe with cracked lips. “Is it Jamey? In the flesh? What makes you think the Fisherman would ever talk to you?”
“Well, would he rather have me knock on his door at Police Headquarters?”
They got up off their stools and stood near the pay telephone. Jamey whistled “Columbus Was an Irishman” and “Phil the Fluter’s Ball.” Coote was at his table before he could turn his back.
“It must have been a long ride from Chinatown,” Jamey said. “The traffic can get pretty thick in the morning … isn’t that right?”
“What do you want, O’Toole?”
“Where’s your bloodhound, Isaac the Pure?”
“Isaac?” the Fisherman said. He wasn’t chasing salmon at the Kilkenny Inn. He came without his hip boots. “Isaac snores with the rats on Centre Street. I haven’t said hello to that prick in months.”
“Then why are Isaac’s lads waiting for me outside my mother’s building?”
“Maybe he loves you, who knows?… I could send a message up to him and find out.”
“Don’t bother. I’ll ask him myself.”
“I wouldn’t do that, Jamey boy. It’s best to leave Isaac out of it.”
“Listen, old man, if you hit Annie Powell again, if your little helpers touch her one more time with their sticks, I’ll scream … scream to Isaac, and if Isaac doesn’t hear, I’ll go to the PC himself. Tiger John isn’t much, but he’ll have to protect his reputation … he’ll throttle you … tell me, how are all the McNeills? Has your clan inherited the earth yet? You might retire a bit too soon, and your ass will get shaved, just like mine … you’re a fouler cop than I ever was, Coote McNeill.”
The Fisherman left the table. He didn’t motion to the little people on the stools. He walked out of the Kilkenny and got into his car, a blue Chevrolet. The Fisherman drove himself downtown, while Robinson Crusoe rocked at his table. He ordered whiskey in a bottle. He wasn’t going to drink one thimble at a time. The little sergeants frowned at him. So he drank without their blessings. He didn’t like his conversation with Coote. He was trying to protect Annie girl, but h
e hadn’t jabbed the Fisherman hard as he should. He couldn’t run to Isaac now. The bastards would be crouching in the doorways. Coote had people everywhere. They were too short to reach his head. Their sticks would clatter around his shoulders and break. The donkey would get past Twenty-third Street, all right. He’d have splinters in his back from all the sticks. But he’d go deeper and deeper into Chelsea, crawl on his knuckles to find his mother’s house. He banged on the table to get the barman’s ear. “Another bottle, you fat son of a bitch. Put it on Coote’s bill. I wonder if a cheap old fart like that will give me a decent wake.”
The little people began to smile. “We’ll bury you fine, Jamey, we will.”
“You’ll be burying Coote before you bury me. I have a whole other bottle to drink”
Part
Five
21
FUCKING Isaac.
He was the freak of a Department that had been fed the Irish way: on loyalty, discipline, and devotion to the cause. Isaac had no sense of camaraderie. He was a commissioner who fiddled on his own. He wouldn’t move into Headquarters. He sat in that old, dying box on Centre Street, a huge limestone hut that was beginning to crumble and sink into the ground. Give him another year, and the boy will be swimming in mud. No one could pull him out of his corner room. The First Dep was an ally of Mayor Sammy Dunne. “Hizzoner” had split Becky Karp’s brains in the primaries, beaten the regular and reform wings of his own Party, and now everybody was paying homage to Sam. You couldn’t touch Isaac because of him.
Isaac the Pure kept a blanket in his desk. He would sleep at the old building whenever he liked. The one janitor who serviced the place couldn’t throw out the First Dep. Isaac was free to stroll the long marble corridors past midnight. The floors had weakened tiles that would break loose under Isaac’s feet. He would trip in the dark and curse the old Police Headquarters. But he loved it, tile for tile, with its dented iron rails, the roof that leaked on his head, its cracked dome and useless clock tower. He’d made his house in these ruins.
But his triumph was small. A desk, a blanket, and marble floors weren’t much comfort to Isaac the bum. He had a bad dream in his corner of the building. Three women were chasing him: Sylvia, Annie, and Jennifer Pears. Their faces would intermingle in Isaac’s dream, twist into odd amalgams. Annie had Jennifer’s green eyes. Sylvia had a mark on her cheek. Jennifer began to look like Isaac’s dead angel, Manfred Coen.
He muttered “Blue Eyes” and coughed himself awake. His room seemed clogged with a kind of soft gray smoke. It was dust, moving bands of dust. He poked into the hall. The dust was thick as Moses. Isaac could barely see. He felt his way to the landing. There were plasterers on the ground floor, teams of them. They stood on ladders and knocked through the walls. They wore masks with little nose cones and mouth protectors. They had a woman with them. Isaac recognized her under her mask. It was the fallen mayoral candidate, Rebecca Karp. She motioned to Isaac. They walked out of Headquarters and faced one another on the street. Becky took off her mask. She smiled.
“Cocksucker, I warned you to get with me.”
Isaac slapped the dust off his shoulders. “Rebecca, Sam would have destroyed you without my help. This town loves a little man. It never votes for big, ballsy women.”
“Isaac, you’re such a baby. How did you survive so long? Schmuck, we’ve taken over this building.”
Isaac stopped slapping himself. “Who says?”
“Don’t you read the papers? I’m president of the Downtown Restoration Committee. We’re turning this shithole into a cultural center. And we’re kicking you out.”
“The City owns the building,” Isaac said.
“I know. We leased it from the Department of Real Estate for a dollar a month. Isaac, you can’t win.”
Isaac went to Broome Street and dialed the Mayor’s Office. He couldn’t get Sammy on the phone. “Tell him again … Isaac wants to see him.”
He had to hike down to City Hall. He could never be anonymous in the Mayor’s territories. Reporters sniffed him from “Room Nine,” their closet near the main door. They ran out to grab hold of Isaac and badger him. Why wouldn’t he give press conferences any longer? Was Sammy going to make him a super “Commish” in charge of all corruption?
“Children,” Isaac said, “this is a private call. Catch me at my office.”
They had their spokesman, a boy from the Daily News. “Isaac, don’t bullshit us, please. You come in and out of your own whirlwind. Who can ever catch you?”
He got around them and entered the Mayor’s wing. All that swagger he’d enjoyed with Sam was gone. He had to confront the Mayor’s three male secretaries. He couldn’t get past the third secretary without snarling and rolling his eyes. The second secretary was less afraid of him. Isaac’s jaw burned from gnashing his teeth. “Sonny, I don’t make appointments with the Mayor.” The first secretary had Isaac by the seat of his pants. “Lay off. We’re blood brothers, me and Sam …”
The cops outside the Mayor’s door laughed at the spectacle of Isaac being chased by three male secretaries. They were a pair of plainclothesmen who had sworn to guard Sammy with their lives. They would have had to club the First Deputy Police Commissioner behind the ear. But Sammy heard the commotion and peeked out of his office. The vision in front of his eyes saddened him. “It’s only Isaac,” he said. “Let him through.”
Isaac got into that office on the heels of Mayor Sam. His Honor wouldn’t look at him. He stared out the window at City Hall Park. His aides had bolted the window for him. Sam was frightened of September drafts. He was a different Mayor now. That meek illiterate who took to a hospital bed before the primaries had become the fierce Old Man of City Hall.
“You made up with Becky Karp, didn’t you, Sam?”
“Not at all.”
“She would have broken your neck, and you’re kissy with her. I should have figured that. It’s pinky politics. All the Democrats roll out of the same barracks room. It’s bite, bite at the primaries, and then you lick each other’s navel.”
“Don’t be so harsh. I hate the bitch.”
“Then why did you make her a landlady over me?”
“I did not. You’re accusing the wrong man.”
“You gave her Centre Street. You leased my building to her fucking arts committee.”
“Jesus,” His Honor muttered. “I only lent her one wing. She can’t abuse you, Isaac … it’s your fault.”
“How come?”
“I wanted to get rid of Tiger John and give you the PC’s job.”
“Give it to Chief Inspector McNeill. He’s your best cop.”
“McNeill’s too old.”
“Old? He’s younger than you are, Sammy Dunne.”
“But McNeill’s not the Mayor of New York. The people won’t stand for a decrepit Police Commissioner.”
“Sam, I won’t be your Tiger John.”
“Then help us out, for God’s sake. Mangen is on our back. What can I do? He’s the Special Pros. Come in with me, Isaac. Take one of my chairs.”
“Is that some title you’re thinking of?”
“Yes. An assistant mayor to watch the Police.”
“A rat, you mean, a rat working out of your office. Sammy, it’s not for me.”
The Mayor turned glum and retired to the golden-knobbed desk that Fiorello LaGuardia had used. “Isaac, Isaac, you know that job of yours. The First Dep is always a vulnerable man.”
One of his inspectors ran up to Isaac outside City Hall. It was fat Marvin Winch. Marvin was out of breath. “Sir, we’ve been looking all over for you. Our boys found Jamey O’Toole. Looks like he was kicked in the face by a lot of people.”
“Is he still alive?”
“No, sir.”
“I hope you didn’t bring Jamey to Bellevue? I don’t want him in the morgue … not yet. Those medical examiners will chop his fingers off and put them in a jar.”
“Isaac, he’s in a yard behind his mama’s place. They tried to stuff him in
a garbarge can. But he’s too big.”
Marvin Winch drove him up to Chelsea so Isaac could stand in the carnage around Jamey O’Toole. Broken sticks. Blood. Teeth. Patches of wool. A crushed eyeglass frame. A third of someone’s sleeve. Jamey had done a bit of dancing before he died. The bastards had left him in an awkward position. He sat with his rump in a garbage can. Nothing more of him could fit. The donkey must have been punched and kicked a thousand times. His head was swollen with bump upon bump. You couldn’t see the man’s nose. He’d clutched at them in a blinded state. There were clots of blood where his eyes had been.
Isaac didn’t examine the sticks and teeth near O’Toole. The lab boys could squat with their clippers and sensitive gloves and play Sherlock Holmes. Isaac left things to Inspector Winch. “Marvin, they’ll accuse us of body snatching if we don’t watch out. You’ll have to bring Jamey’s mother downstairs to identify the son of a bitch. You ride with him to Bellevue, hear? The kids from the ambulance like to steal a dead man’s shoe. They think it’s good luck.”
He strode uptown with ambulances in his head. The logistics of getting Jamey to Bellevue were uncertain at best. It would take more than one attendant and cop to move that corpse. Four detectives, five, would have to squeeze him into a body bag. A normal stretcher would collapse under O’Toole. They’d be smart to borrow a dolly from a grocery store and trundle him into the ambulance. Isaac’s love of detail had gone macabre ever since he returned from Ireland.
Annie Powell wasn’t at her corner. Isaac asked the young dudes about her. “You mean the crazy one who sings without her underpants? She’s on Ninth Avenue, with all the bag ladies.”
He knew that spot. Three old women had built an enclave of cardboard boxes on Ninth and Forty-first. It was an open-air fort; the old women lived inside the enclave with their belongings stuffed in shopping bags. Isaac would permit no cop to drive them out of their fort.
Secret Isaac Page 13
