El Bronx (The Isaac Sidel Novels)

by Jerome Charyn

  “Richardson, you’re a genius. How’d you get that tape?”

  Richardson rolled his eyes. “I wired the candy store, that’s how.”

  “And Panther really paid …”

  “He didn’t pay shit. I spliced a few sentences together. And I created a little monologue of Panther raving against the prince.”

  “What about the bag of money?”

  “The money’s mine. I had to take the loss, or I couldn’t have shocked the prince into believing all the bull I told him.”

  “It came out of your pocket?”

  “Sixty grand. But I’ll get it back.”

  “Richardson, I take back whatever bad things I said about you. The hell with Merlin. I’m going to your school from now on.”

  The gangbuster slapped Alyosha on the head. “You’ll do more than that, homey. You’re gonna watch Bernardo, play up to him, kiss his ass.”

  “Bernardo’s with your own brigade.”

  “He’s a loose wire,” Richardson said. “Has his own electric power … homey, who saved your life?”

  “You did, Brock.”

  “And what do you owe me?”

  “Everything.”

  “And what do you have to tell me?”

  “Nothing, Brock.”

  He didn’t tell Richardson about his meal with Marilyn the Wild, and the talk he’d overheard between Isaac and Barbarossa. He should have. Bernardo was a son of a bitch, an executioner. He’d sentenced David Six Fingers to death, had destroyed David’s hobby shop. But Alyosha couldn’t seem to talk about Fantômas, and some mask that made no sense …

  Richardson didn’t deliver him to Featherbed Lane. They didn’t even return to the Bronx. They drove into the heart of Manhattan, and Richardson let him off in front of Marianna’s building.

  “You wait for Bernardo upstairs. He’ll be coming back with his bitch. You do a little song and dance and when it’s time to go, you can ride uptown with Bernardo. He’ll open up to you, and then you can start pumping him.”

  “Pumping him about what?”

  “The stars, the moon, and Clarice’s tits … he talks, you listen. That’s the business of a rat.”

  He handed Alyosha an enormous box of chocolates.

  “Richardson, what’s that?”

  “I dunno. I found it near Panther … at the candy store. Give it to your sweetheart. That’s why you’re here, aren’t you? The candy box is your cover, kid. You’re courting Marianna Storm.”

  Alyosha went into the building. The doorman announced him, and he rode upstairs with a box of chocolates that was bigger than a barbell. Marianna met him at the door with a puzzled look.

  “Alyosha, I didn’t …”

  “This is for you,” he said, and she had to carry the chocolates. He followed her into the apartment and now he understood her embarrassment. Marianna had a guest, Tippy Goldstone, a fifteen-year-old footballer from Horace Mann. He had blond hair and wore the colors of his school. He stared at the chocolates and tried not to smirk.

  “Tip,” she said, “Alyosha’s a great, great artist. He does unbelievable drawings … in the Bronx.”

  “I’d love to see them,” Tip Goldstone said. “But tell me, ‘Alyosha’ isn’t Bronx material. Is it your tag, your gang name?”

  “No. I’m named after a moron in a Russian novel.”

  “I thought so,” said Tip Goldstone. “The Idiot, isn’t it?”

  “No. The Brothers Karamazov.”

  “I’m fascinated …”

  Marianna glowered at him. “Tippy, stop.”

  “I mean it. Mr. Alyosha, who gave you that name?”

  “The Bronx brigade. I’m on their books as a registered rat.”

  Tip Goldstone grew alert. “Really?”

  “I helped them put my brother in jail. They got to Rooster Ramirez and David Six Fingers on account of me … Mr. Goldstone, I kill whatever I touch.”

  Alyosha ran out of the apartment. Marianna followed him into the hall, with the chocolates against her chest. But she couldn’t find Alyosha. He hadn’t waited for the elevator. He took the stairs.

  She returned to the apartment with Alyosha’s chocolates.

  “Quite a little character,” said Tip. “If that’s what Merlin is about, I’d like to join. But do you believe his tale?”

  “Yes,” Marianna said. “Every word.” And she started to scream at Tip, who suddenly saw how much in love he was with Marianna. He took the chocolates out of her arms, tried to kiss her. Marianna socked him in the face. He stumbled for a moment, said “Marianna …”

  She socked him again.

  He started to sulk. He patted his Horace Mann jacket, turned on his heels like a cadet in a parade drill, and left.

  Marianna sat down on the floor with her box of chocolates. Alyosha had to show up when Tippy was here. She didn’t even like Tippy Goldstone. She was experimenting with a new kind of cookie, peanut brittle, with raisins, and she’d invited him on a whim.

  Clarice arrived with Fantômas, discovered Marianna on the floor. “Darling,” she said, “are you doing aikido, or what?”

  “I’m contemplating a box of chocolates. Can’t you tell?”

  She gave Fantômas a peanut brittle cookie and ran into her room.

  12

  He’d been trained by the Big Guy, and Bernardo could total a man in half a second, finesse a criminal into giving up his gun, and know when some fucker was following him. But this fucker was as shrewd as Bernardo himself, shrewder even, because his shadow didn’t leave a trace. Bernardo had to sniff him in the wind, like a hunting dog. But the shadow had his own sixth sense. The fucker fell back, aware now that Bernardo was aware of him. It couldn’t have been an ordinary cop, or an Apache from the basement at Boro Hall. Bernardo would have spotted one or the other. It had to be a cop from Bernardo’s own class at the Academy, someone who’d also been trained by Sidel. Another fucking Fantômas.

  Bernardo zigzagged across Manhattan, from Sutton Place South to Peter Cooper Village, then north and south again to the Lillian Wald projects, where he’d busted up a gang of Puerto Rican separatists while he was still at the Academy. Isaac had plucked him out of class and put him into the street. He’d lived undercover for three months. The separatists were going to bomb the Statue of Liberty. Bernardo delivered them and all their sticks of dynamite. There was one more cop on the same assignment. A madman who had no fear of the separatists, who would have slept with dynamite day and night, who’d come out of Vietnam with a slightly crippled hand …

  Bernardo stopped at a bar on East Thirteenth, where the separatists had congregated once upon a time, drinking Scottish ale that they called TNT. Half a glass could fix you for the afternoon, make your eyeballs wander in your head, and give you enough vitamins and minerals so that you could skip two meals. The bar hadn’t changed. Bernardo sat in the back with his TNT. He didn’t even have to watch the window.

  Vietnam Joe wandered in, ordered the same brown ale, and sat down with Bernardo. They clinked glasses without a smile.

  “Hair of the dog,” they said. Neither of them knew what it meant, but that’s what all the separatists sang when they sipped TNT.

  “When did you make me?” Barbarossa asked.

  “I felt you, brother, I felt you for a long time.”

  “It’s not official. I wouldn’t wire you down for those crapheads at IAD.”

  “I know. You’re with the glamour boys. I caught your picture in the Post … guarding Madonna. But I don’t need a chaperone.”

  “Bernardo, the Big Guy depends on you. You’re the only thoroughbred he has. He can’t run Merlin without you. And you pull a stunt that’s like a textbook case from the Academy. You visit Storm’s wife wearing a mask …”

  “I’m kinky, and so is Clarice.”

  “Who paid you to put on that mask?”

  “I told you, Joey. It’s a sexual twist.”

  “Who wants her dead?”

  “It’s a mystery.”

&nb
sp; “How did we survive the separatists? We read each other’s eyes in the dark. We never bullshitted each other … Bernardo, I can’t read your eyes and I have so much light, I could be sitting in a sun-shower.”

  “It’s my own caper, Joey. Tell that to the Big Guy.”

  “Tell him yourself. All you fucking Apaches ought to be in jail. Just tell the Big Guy what’s behind your little romance.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Bernardo, you’re my only case right now. I’ll dog you until one of us is dead.”

  “I know … would you care for another cup of TNT?”

  They shared three more bottles, reminisced. Barbarossa had been Bernardo’s hero, the street cop who’d sold drugs in Vietnam and would jump off a roof to catch a falling child.

  “Joey, I’ve been remiss. I never gave you a wedding present.”

  “How could you? You’re busy with the Bronx.”

  “It’s a funny thing. I hate Manhattan. I get the hives soon as I hit Central Park. It was never that way. Didn’t we cruise the Village, Joey? Didn’t we eat Peking duck with the biggest Chinese gamblers?”

  “You’ve been an Apache too long.”

  “I always wanted to get out of the Bronx. I had the best ticket. Sidel. He sent me to Italy and England and France. The Grand Tour, he said. I was in Monaco and Deauville. I saw the leaning tower of Pisa. It’s not a joke. That sucker really does lean. I visited castles. I gobbled snails. I saw the room where Leonardo da Vinci invented the airplane.”

  “He did not. It was the Wright brothers, Orville and Wilbur. I read it in a book. They climbed up into the air in the Kitty Hawk.”

  “Fuck Orville and Wilbur. Joey, I looked at da Vinci’s drawings. I traced the outline of his flying ship with my own finger … lemme finish. After the tour, I couldn’t bear Manhattan. That leaning tower belonged in the Bronx.”

  “I gotta blow. Search your stinking heart, huh? And be careful, kid. I’m not the only one who’s following you. I noticed a couple of Apaches on your tail.”

  “Impossible,” Bernardo said. “I would have made them in a minute.”

  “Not when they work in teams of nine and ten, each Apache with his own perimeter.”

  “Fuck their perimeters. Nobody else is on my tail. Only you.”

  “Bernardo,” Barbarossa said, getting up from the table. “Listen and live. Go to Isaac before it’s too late.”

  Bernardo sat alone, nursed the dregs of his TNT. He grew homicidal, thinking of Richardson and his old Apache trick, ten cops with field radios while Bernardo walked in and out of their perimeters.

  He rode uptown to Boro Hall, passing the deserted shell of Yankee Stadium. He’d been a little young to see Mantle and Maris in a Yankee uniform, though the Big Guy had taken him to the owners’ box last year to meet the Mick, a jovial, aging bad boy with lines on his neck. The Big Guy was like a baby. He asked Mantle for his autograph, and he treasured that slip of paper, walked around with it, staring at Mantle’s autograph, ignoring the governor of New York and two borough presidents.

  Bernardo went up to Richardson’s rooms. Richardson was smoking pot with his Apaches. Bernardo had to be polite. He sucked once on Richardson’s roach. Then Richardson dismissed the other Apaches.

  “Homey, I got you out of hot water. Martin Lima was getting ready to skin you alive.”

  “Watch me tremble,” Bernardo said.

  “You’ll tremble, all right. I had to clean up your dirty deeds. The prince is paying good money. You didn’t have to do bloody carnage in a candy store.”

  “And Panther didn’t have to rape a retarded girl.”

  “You have to fold that into the profits. Every deal has a downside.”

  “She’s in a coma, Brock.”

  “Then you ask my permission … and I would have given it. I told Lima that the decision to hit came from me.”

  “That’s kind of you. But you’d better pull your boys, or I’ll cripple them.”

  “What boys?” Richardson said, handling the roach with his special tweezers.

  “I used to be part of that perimeter trick, remember? How many warlords did we destroy with our eight-piece band?”

  “Eight? I had to put twenty Apaches on your ass, have them watch you around the clock. That’s a compliment, homey.”

  “I’d call it the ground plans for a kill.”

  “Are you wearing a wire? Or are you just a psychopath? I’d caution you to shut your fucking mouth.”

  “Search me, Brock, pat me down.”

  “I don’t have to search you. But you shouldn’t have disappointed us. You were supposed to frighten that woman to death, throw her off the balcony if you had to, and you end up fucking her at every historical site in the Bronx. You’re into me for ninety thousand.”

  “You’ll get your money back.”

  “It’s not about money. You had a deed to do. We can’t risk a second attack. She’ll get wise and go to the police. Or worse. She’ll blab to the Big Guy.”

  “But she has nothing to blab about.”

  “Yeah, Bernardo. That’s our problem. But you could do us a favor and keep away from the bitch. How can we plan anything if you’re her bodyguard?”

  “Don’t hurt her, Brock.”

  “What?”

  “I mean it. I don’t want her touched.”

  “Are you getting Alzheimer’s, kid? That woman is our ticket.”

  “Then you’ll have to change your ticket.”

  “I could suspend your ass. I could give you eternal desk duty, without a gun.”

  “Come on, Brock. We’re the good guys. We don’t make war on each other. We only nuke the gangs, one by one … and live off their labor.”

  He wandered out of Richardson’s offices. Apaches kept looking at him … he was already a pariah. He walked uptown to the motel. Abdul wasn’t at the gate. Abner Gumm had found another kid. Bernardo couldn’t recognize him, though the kid wore the blue handkerchief hat of the Jokers. A virgin, he muttered, a fresh recruit.

  He met Abner in the common room of their bungalow. The Bronx historian had a twitch at the edge of his mouth.

  “What’s wrong, Shooter? Expecting company?”

  “The streets are too quiet,” Abner said.

  “Then you ought to have a picnic photographing all the bricks and stones.”

  “In this haze? Even the rats would seem invisible.”

  Abner went into his own bedroom, shut the door. Bernardo watched an old movie on Abner’s giant screen. With Gable. About an earthquake in San Francisco. And a woman who sings in Gable’s saloon. She reminded him of Clarice. Jeanette MacDonald, who still had fan clubs all over the world …

  Bernardo went into his own room. Took off his clothes, got into the shower. But he didn’t like the movement at the corner of the Shooter’s mouth. He didn’t like not seeing Abdul at the gate, and he brought his Glock into the shower with him, propped it against the soap dish, where it wouldn’t be wet. He sang a little louder than he should have. “San Francisco …”

  He caught the shadow of a man through the shower curtain. He didn’t stop singing. He grabbed his Glock and barreled through the curtain. Barbarossa was sitting in Bernardo’s leather chair.

  “Get dressed. You’re gonna have some visitors.”

  Bernardo only had time to get into his underpants when three guys in hangman’s hoods tiptoed into the room with Nighthawks. Bernardo almost laughed. A chorus of Fantômases. He didn’t even consider glocking them. Barbarossa seized their glass guns while Bernardo tweaked their noses under the masks.

  “Kid,” Barbarossa said, “aren’t you gonna look?”

  “Why? It will make me sick.”

  It was Barbarossa who plucked off the masks. He saw three brats with burnt lips and ragged eyes. Dixie Cups? Kamikazes who’d taken long blows on their pipes? Who else would run into Bernardo Dublin’s bedroom?

  “Ah, Joey, tell them to scram. They’re Dixie Cups, very, very low on the ladder.”


  He shoved the three Fantômases out of the room with their Nighthawks … and the Shooter came in clutching a baseball bat. Bernardo smiled at the signature: Roger Maris. A Yankee fan, through and through.

  The twitch was gone from the Shooter’s face. “Bernardo, I was sleeping …”

  “It’s all right, Ab. Lemme introduce you to Barbarossa, Sidel’s son-in-law.”

  “Ah, I met Sidel,” the Shooter said. “He invited me to the mansion.”

  “Dad’s like that. He loves to mingle.”

  “It wasn’t a social call. He asked me lots of questions. I’m the Bronx’s official historian.”

  “Of course. Abner Gumm. I admire your photographs. I saw them on Fifth Avenue. At the museum.”

  “All right,” Bernardo said. “Ab, go back to your bedroom … and thanks for bringing the Roger Maris.”

  The Shooter left, and Bernardo began to pace. “Joey, I don’t wanna hear one word … I’m not talking to Isaac. I’m not talking to you. Now I’d like to finish my shower, okay?”

  He crept back inside the curtain … without his Glock. He’d lied to Barbarossa. He recognized the three little shits. They belonged to Richardson’s crop of rats. His boss had sent him a kiss and a kite. Careful, Bernardo. The Apaches are coming.

  Part Four

  13

  Isaac arrived in a police launch at the fireboat station and raced across Carl Schurz Park to meet with the Merliners. He’d been attending a conference at the Children’s Psychiatric Center on Wards Island. He’d argued with every doctor in the house. He wanted to board violent children upstairs at Gracie Mansion. “I’ll cure them.”

  “Your Honor, the City wouldn’t allow it.”

  “I’ll pay for their keep out of my own pocket.”

  “It’s still illegal,” said the chief psychiatrist. “There’s no supervision, nothing.”

  And he crossed Hell Gate on the police launch in time for Merlin. But Alyosha wasn’t there and Isaac began to brood. He’d become a cracked patriarch, believing that all the kids in the City belonged to him.

  Marianna seemed as disappointed as Isaac. She’d baked peanut brittle cookies for the Merliners, but she wouldn’t sample them without Alyosha. Even Isaac seemed reluctant: he couldn’t feast without the kid. But one of the guests was having a jolly time. Porter Endicott, the president of his family’s own private bank. He kept gobbling Marianna’s cookies. He was thirty-six years old, the chairman of Billy the Kid’s treasure chest and the only banker around that Isaac could bear. He’d been using his family’s fortune to build playgrounds in the Bronx. But he wouldn’t invest in local enterprises or local housing.