El Bronx (The Isaac Sidel Novels)

by Jerome Charyn

  “Isaac, why tell me now? I’m not your snitch.”

  “But you could help me, Dave. Richardson has disappeared into the dunes. I’d like to grab the cock-sucker.”

  “But I’m a roofboy, and roofboys are blind to what happens down below.”

  “Dave, your searchlight can cover half the Bronx. You deal all the time. People talk.”

  “Not about Richardson.”

  “Then what about the Shooter, Abner Gumm?”

  “That pathetic little guy? I let him take whatever pictures he wants. He’s been documenting us, writing a book.”

  “For the Bronx brigade. He’s one of Richardson’s rats.”

  “Isaac, you’d better blow. The lords are getting jealous. They’ll shoot out my lights.”

  Isaac started to leave with Barbarossa, while the warlords sat in their fiberglass vests and saluted him. “El Caballo.”

  They shoved north to Crotona Park, stopped at the City Register’s office on Arthur Avenue, with its own medieval accounting; computers hadn’t come this far into the Bronx. The clerks asked Isaac for his autograph. He looked at the borough’s property map, block by block, with the little blue tags that recorded the current owner of individual buildings and lots. His hand started to shake. Richardson had a dozen blue tags. The Shooter another four. Birdy Towne had five. There was even a blue tag in Bernardo Dublin’s name. Sidereal Ventures was tagged two hundred and eighteen times. None of that worried him until he saw the tags devoted to Marianna Storm. Sixteen of them.

  He rushed into the deputy register’s rooms. That deputy worked for him. His name was Myron Small. Isaac gathered his own best bag of tricks. “Myron, are you a Democrat?”

  “Yes, Mr. Mayor. I’m delighted to—”

  “Loyal and true?”

  “Yes, Mr. Mayor.”

  “And if I told you that I was conducting an investigation, you’d keep the news under your hat?”

  “Forever,” said the deputy. “Or at least as long as I could.”

  “Can a twelve-year-old girl own property in the Bronx?”

  “Strictly speaking? Yes and no. Children, even cats and dogs, can hold title. Your little girl could gobble up half the borough, but she couldn’t buy or sell without a guardian behind her.”

  “So her appearance on a deed is almost like a decoration.”

  “More than that. Once she comes of age, the property will—”

  “Myron, can you tell me who’s the president and chief executive officer of Sidereal Ventures?”

  “It’s in the public record, Mr. Mayor.”

  “Myron, I’m asking you.”

  Myron Small scratched about in a huge filing cabinet, returned with a tattered card. “Mr. Mayor, this is a privileged source, and I—”

  “Man or woman, Myron?”

  “Woman … Mrs. J. Michael Storm.”

  Isaac kissed his deputy on the forehead. “The mayor’s like a glass man, isn’t he, Myron?”

  “I don’t—”

  “He comes and goes … I’ve never been here, Myron. We never talked. You never opened your filing cabinet for me.”

  And while the deputy blinked and brooded, Isaac was already out the door.

  17

  He had so much bitterness, he had to get back into the sky. The chopper landed on a knoll in Crotona Park, and Isaac climbed aboard with Joe. They sat above the Bronx, Isaac imagining a mountain of blue tags. His eyes began to tear from all the rage in him, and he couldn’t even look for Alyosha.

  It was Joe who got him out of the chopper and brought him home to Marilyn the Wild. She didn’t badger the Big Guy. Marilyn could sense his murderous solitude. She rocked him in her arms, the only father she would ever have, and he was almost like a baby. She wished she had milk in her breasts for Isaac the Brave.

  She fed him chicken soup, and felt a terrible desire for Joe. It could have been incest. She didn’t care what you called it. She would have stripped Joe, sat on him while Isaac watched, but it would only have deepened his solitude.

  Marilyn behaved. She combed her father’s hair, groomed his magnificent sideburns.

  “Dad,” she said, “we could stay in the mansion with you … or you could stay here.”

  “Children,” he said, “the City never sleeps … I have work to do.”

  But he couldn’t move. He had no life in his legs, a glass man from a glass house. He fell asleep on the sofa. Marilyn had to phone the mansion. “Isaac’s with us,” she growled. “And I don’t want him disturbed.”

  But the calls began to arrive from this deputy mayor and that. Candida Cortez, deputy mayor for finance, screamed something about the Fire Department Pension Fund. Marilyn took it all down. There were at least nine crises at City Hall. Marilyn turned philosophical. She would have roused her dad for one crisis, but nine of them could wait.

  “Alyosha,” he mumbled in his sleep. Marilyn dozed in a chair beside her dad, got up with him in the middle of the night, gave him a glass of water, went back to sleep, abandoning poor Joe, who lay alone in the bedroom like an exile.

  Isaac woke at noon, Marilyn still beside him. They had cornflakes together, fresh strawberries and skim milk. Marilyn made her dad a cappuccino. He was almost content. He showered and shaved under his sideburns with one of Joey’s blades.

  “Where’s the son-in-law?”

  “In the Bronx,” Marilyn said, “looking for that little artist.”

  Isaac shoved his Glock inside his pants, pecked Marilyn on the cheek, and strolled up to Sutton Place South. Marianna had gone to her aikido class, but Clarice was at home with her bodyguards, Milton and Sam, who wanted to frisk the Big Guy. He wouldn’t let them near his Glock. He pulled it out of his pants, like Jesse James, stuck it between their skulls. “Dismiss them, Clarice. No more bodyguards.”

  “Are you crazy?” she said. “What about Fantômas?”

  “Fantômas is sick … he’s lying in bed. Get rid of your geeks.”

  “Who’s a geek?” Milton said.

  “Sonny, I’m the mayor of New York. I could rip up your license, if you have one. Leave!”

  “Clarice?” Sam said.

  “Listen to him. He’s a maniac. I’ll see you later.”

  “There is no later. If these lads come back, they’ll wish they’d never heard of Manhattan.”

  Milton and Sam slumped out of the apartment. Clarice slapped Isaac, dug at him with her nails. The Glock fell out of his hand. She slapped him again, and Isaac smiled as he tasted his own blood. He couldn’t believe how beautiful she was with her nostrils flaring, her gray eyes shining with hostility. His anger fell away.

  They started to kiss, and suddenly the Big Guy was rolling in the carpets without his clothes. He hadn’t been near another woman ever since Margaret Tolstoy had floated back into his life. He wasn’t gentle with Clarice. He caressed her with a certain meanness, and the two of them made love like a couple of warring seals.

  “You’ve been wanting to do this for a long time, haven’t you, Isaac? It’s like getting back at your old student, the baseball czar. It excites you … fucking J. and me at the same time.”

  “J. wasn’t my student. I counseled him when he was at Columbia … got him out of a jam.”

  “Isaac, you know what I mean.”

  He’d been thinking of Bernardo, not J. Michael Storm. If Bernardo hadn’t betrayed him, the Big Guy might not have left his spittle on Clarice. But he wasn’t sure who was cuckolding whom. He’d lost his bearings in the carpets, the compass inside his head that seemed to connect him with other people.

  He took a bath with Clarice, sat in a tub that was larger than his old living room on Rivington Street, where he’d lived before he inherited the mayor’s glass house.

  “Isaac, why were you so rough on my bodyguards?”

  “Because you don’t need them,” Isaac said, stepping out of the tub and climbing into his boxer shorts. He had a craving, a terrible tooth, for Marianna’s cookies. But he didn’t want to steal int
o the kitchen and abandon Clarice … no, he would have abandoned her if he’d had an inkling that Marianna’s cookies were there.

  “How did it start, Clarice? The business with Sidereal?”

  She’d been drying her legs, and Isaac watched her from the mirror, the fluting of her back, the soft, curving skin.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Come on, Clarice. Why the sudden philanthropic interest in the Bronx?”

  “I’ve hardly ever been to the Bronx.”

  “Hardly ever been? That could slide you out of any scrape. Sidereal is very thirsty. It wants to buy the Bronx. And you’re its president and CEO.”

  “It’s a technicality, Isaac. I sign a lot of documents that I never read.”

  “And do you sign for Marianna, Madam President? How are her properties doing, huh?”

  “It was J.’s idea,” she said, pulling away from Isaac and putting on her blouse. “Don’t you understand? We’re penniless. I’ve been living off the equity on our Houston home.”

  “And this apartment?”

  “Window dressing. It belongs to my favorite aunt … J. invested in stupid things, spent and spent, and Sidereal was supposed to recoup our losses, get us back on our feet.”

  “But the Bronx hasn’t seen a real-estate boom in forty years.”

  “J. was going to make his own boom.”

  “Jesus, how many cities has J. been speculating in?”

  “Only one,” said Clarice.

  “Why not Baltimore and Albuquerque? There have to be other ratlands.”

  “You know J. He’s only interested in the bleakest of the bleak.”

  “The bleakest of the bleak … I’m sorry, my dear. He pinpointed the Bronx because it was so fucking dependent on Yankee Stadium. He’s the czar. He could open the stadium or keep it closed. But not even the Yankees can save all that real estate. He’s working in tandem, isn’t he? With Billy the Kid. What has Billy promised J.?”

  “The moon.”

  “Billy ends the strike with J.’s help, and he waltzes into the White House. That’s how popular he’ll become. He promises to rebuild the Bronx. Industrial parks on Sidereal sites.”

  “Something like that.”

  Isaac started to shake her. “What did you see in my eyes when I got here? That I uncovered your game? And you decided to make a little lovey … to quiet the mayor.”

  Clarice slapped Isaac again and again. He didn’t grab her hand. Both sides of his mouth were bleeding: She stopped, started to cry.

  “Where’s Bernardo? When can I see him?”

  “He’s convalescing at the mansion … one of your partners, Richardson, wanted to wind his clock.”

  “I don’t have any partners.”

  “Is Richardson the go-between, the guy who brings governors and thieves together?”

  “Ask him.”

  “I would, Clarice. But he’s disappeared with the whole Bronx brigade … you aren’t fighting with J., are you? It’s a big act.”

  “And the shiner he gave me?”

  “Window dressing,” Isaac said.

  “I’m divorcing the son of a bitch, but I can’t help it if my finances are tied to his. If J. goes down, I go down.”

  “And poor Bernardo. He’s your chevalier, the unclever knight. You suckered him into coming here, into putting on that mask.”

  “I did not,” she said. “I did not. I was frightened …”

  “So frightened that you made it with him.”

  “I didn’t plan anything, Isaac. I wasn’t waiting for Fantômas. But I could feel him hesitate … it excited me.”

  “And would I excite you, Madam President, if I wore a mask?”

  “No,” she said. “You’re not Fantômas.”

  They didn’t even kiss at the door. They weren’t strangers or slightly familiar friends, just Merliners caught in some muddle. And the Big Guy had to wonder if he’d made love to a ghost. But this ghost was melancholy. Isaac could read remorse in her gray eyes.

  “You won’t tell Bernardo, will you?”

  “Shouldn’t you be thinking of J.?” Isaac said, profoundly jealous.

  “I don’t give a damn about J.”

  Finally she did hug Isaac, kissed him between the eyes, and he went down the elevator like a bear who’d just eaten a brick of candy … until he bumped into Marianna in the lobby. She was carrying her aikido sword in the same cotton scabbard she would bring to Gracie Mansion. Was Marianna her mother’s accomplice? Another officer of Sidereal Ventures who lent her name to a lot of deeds? And had Merlin become one more conduit for Mr. and Mrs. Storm? Is that why J. was so eager to join? J. was putting on a show, trying to impress Isaac. The baseball czar was already a secret member of the Merliners …

  “Hello, Marianna.”

  She blinked, barely seemed to recognize the Big Guy. Was she counting her fortune?

  “Uncle Isaac, you were supposed to bring me a present.”

  “What present?” he asked.

  “Alyosha.”

  “Barbarossa’s on the case.”

  “Always relying on other people. I’ll have to find him myself.”

  “Don’t you dare. It isn’t safe in the dunes. There are wild dogs … and gangs … and rotten policemen. We’ll go together. In my chopper. But first I have to—”

  “Promises, promises,” Marianna said, and she ran into the elevator with her scabbard, leaving Isaac all alone.

  18

  He showed up on Pine Street, at Porter Endicott’s bank. “I have an appointment,” he told Porter’s private secretary, and she didn’t dare challenge the mayor, call him a liar. She muttered into her telephone, smiled, and said, “He’ll see you now.”

  Isaac trudged into the banker’s office, which had a green carpet, like Yankee Stadium, and he could almost imagine himself in the middle of a baseball diamond, arriving at some stupendous home plate. Porter Endicott sat behind that home plate, a huge oak desk that must have belonged to one of his great-granduncles.

  “Isaac,” Porter said, “I’m enchanted to see you, but I’m expecting a call from Switzerland, and I have to prepare my notes.”

  “I’m talking survival. Switzerland can wait.”

  “Whose survival?”

  “Yours. Mine. Billy the Kid’s.”

  Porter took a tiny tape recorder out of his pocket, turned it on. “Are you threatening me, Your Honor?”

  “Put that contraption away. This is strictly off-the-cuff.”

  “Is that why you rushed down here from City Hall? To tell me my hours and what phone calls I can take?”

  “I didn’t come from City Hall. I was with Clarice … Porter, I’d like you to use your pull to sink a certain corporation.”

  “I’m not the mayor’s Wall Street thug. This bank doesn’t sink corporations.”

  “Stop it. Your bank’s a barracuda. I read it in Fortune magazine. ‘No mercy,’ that’s the Endicott motto. You make and break companies all the time.”

  “And my next victim?”

  “Sidereal Ventures.”

  Porter started to laugh. He returned the tape recorder to his pocket. “Forgive me, Isaac, I …”

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Did you discuss this with Candy Cortez?”

  “Why? What’s Candida got to do with Sidereal?”

  “Your deputy mayor is one of Sidereal’s principal investors.”

  “She’s been dumping City gelt into that scam?”

  “Of course not. It’s all her own … you can hardly blame her. She’s trying to rebuild the Bronx.”

  “Yeah, on the bones of the hungry and the dead … who told her about Sidereal?”

  “I might have. I can’t remember.”

  “Ah, I should have figured. You’re J. Michael’s Manhattan connection …”

  “Not at all. Sidereal is much too risky for us. But Candy didn’t mind the risks. She was adamant about having a Bronx portfolio. And there wasn’t much more than Sidereal tha
t I could suggest.”

  “You think it will prosper, huh? Gimme a banker’s opinion.”

  “I have no opinion, really … I told you. Endicott will move money into the Bronx, but at a much slower pace. We’re considering a mini-mall right now.”

  “On Featherbed Lane?”

  “That’s one possible site. But we’d prefer not to be in the shadow of the Cross Bronx Express.”

  “Then you’re gonna have a hard time locating your little Shangri-la. Because half the Bronx is under that shadow … have you been talking with my people about a tax abatement?”

  “Not until we find the site.”

  “That’s grand,” Isaac said. “And I suppose you’ll have a cineplex and a bowling alley and a maternity shop?… something to satisfy the poor.”

  “We haven’t done our marketing yet.”

  “And how do you market madness and crack pipes, thirteen-year-old mothers, firebugs who aren’t even tall enough to sit in a chair?”

  “Would you rather we stay out of the Bronx?”

  “No. But I still want you to sink Sidereal.”

  “Isaac, how did the last romantic on earth ever get to be mayor of New York?”

  “That’s politics. People love a guy who isn’t eager to run. I can make an awful stink. I’ll tie Billy and J. to kids that Richardson murdered.”

  “Careful, Isaac. Richardson’s a celebrated gangbuster. And those kids are casualties of war.”

  “Believe what you want. But I don’t like it when a prosecutor starts executing children … either you sink Sidereal or I sink Billy the Kid.”

  Isaac ran out of the bank, phoned Candida Cortez from a cigar store, shouted at her. She was the mayor’s prodigy. A daughter of the Bronx who’d graduated from Barnard and the Wharton School of Business. Isaac had nursed her along when he was Commish, had put her in charge of management and budget at the NYPD, and moved her to his own table when he inherited his glass house. She was the youngest deputy mayor in the Sidel administration.

  “I want you to sell all your holdings in Sidereal. Candy …”

  “Boss, we’d better meet.”

  He walked over to Ratner’s. Candida was already there, at one of the back booths. The waiters wouldn’t stop pestering Isaac. He had to scratch his signature on countless slips of paper. Candida had one white hair. She was thirty-two. She wasn’t as volatile as Marilyn the Wild, but she was almost as precious to him. They feasted on onion rolls, cups of black coffee, and apple strudel.