And the two hatless hatters crept out of Gracie Mansion in the middle of the night.
They didn’t get very far. A bunch of cops met Isaac and his Secret Service man outside the gate. With them was Barton Grossvogel, wearing a whistle and white gloves. He’d come to Isaac in his parade uniform, his fists as fat as a man’s head.
“Mr. Mayor, can I talk to you without your shadow?”
“Bart,” Isaac said, “meet Martin Boyle.”
“We’ve already met, haven’t we, Boyle?”
“Where?” Isaac asked, like a sullen boy. Everyone seemed to know Sidel’s business better than Sidel.
“At the White House,” Grossvogel said, “where do you think? Walk with me, will ya?” He grabbed Isaac’s arm and led him into the depths of Carl Schurz Park.
“You stole Michael’s daughter.”
“I did not.”
“But you can tell me where she is.”
“I have my spies, Isaac, just like you. I might be able to repatriate that little girl.”
“And what do I have to do, Bart? Kiss your ass on the convention floor?”
Grossvogel smiled. “Nothing as drastic as that. You’ll promise to lay off, to leave my shop alone.”
“While you rule Elizabeth Street with your own jungle law.”
“The statistics don’t support your little theory. Murder and mayhem are down seventeen percent in my precinct.”
“That’s because a fucking dark prince like you can manufacture your own statistics.”
“Watch your language, Mr. Mayor.”
“Why are you in white gloves?”
“Didn’t you know? I’m part of the honor guard at the convention. Do you like my medals, Mr. Mayor?”
“You’re protected, aren’t you? Is Bull Latham behind you? Or do you belong to the White House?”
“A modest captain like me? Will you cooperate? There’ll be no acceptance speeches without that little girl. The convention will fall into some twilight zone. The delegates will have to stay in Manhattan forever.”
“It’s good for business,” Isaac said. “Is she safe?”
“The darling daughter? How can I give you my guarantee?”
Isaac rushed Grossvogel in the dark, but the captain danced around him and socked Isaac in the face. The mayor fell on his ass. He dreamed of that eyeless sailor again. But the sailor had lost his harpoon. His ship was sinking. Isaac opened his eyes and looked up at Boyle.
“You’re bleeding, sir.”
“Of course I’m bleeding. Did you see the size of his fists? He’s a weight lifter.”
“Shouldn’t we return to the mansion, clean you up?”
“We don’t have the time. Why didn’t you tell me that you knew Barton Grossvogel?”
“I’m not a mindreader, sir. We never discussed Captain Bart.”
“Is that what the Prez calls him?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Boyle, did the Prez ask you to spy on me?”
“That wouldn’t be ethical, sir. I’m paid to protect your life.”
Isaac climbed up off the grass of Carl Schurz Park. He was limping a bit. He had to lean on Martin Boyle.
He hailed a cab on East End Avenue.
“Where are we going, sir?”
“To the Garden.”
“Before dawn?”
“Tim Seligman never sleeps,” Isaac said.
They got to Madison Square Garden, were rushed through the gates, Isaac still limping. Policemen saluted him.
“I’m not a general,” Isaac growled.
He found Tim Seligman in his tiny cockpit, under the air-conditioning ducts, where Tim could orchestrate the convention and harangue crucial delegates with a radio-phone hooked around his head. Boyle had to stay outside the cockpit. There was only room for Isaac and Tim.
“Ah, so you’ve surfaced again,” Tim muttered. “Your mouth is bloody. Wash up.”
“Not while Marianna is missing.”
“Christ, man, can’t you stop playing the detective? We’ll get Marianna back. Who the hell would harm her? We’ll be running the country in four months.”
“Without me,” Isaac said.
“My favorite diva,” Tim said, grabbing Isaac’s tie. “Behave. You’re a Democrat, and you’re on the ticket. You can’t get off.”
“You promised me Margaret Tolstoy if I went to Washington.”
“You’ll get Margaret,” Tim said. “We’re already negotiating with the FBI.”
“She’s sleeping with the President. And Bull Latham is the beard.”
“That’s preposterous.”
“Bull hires some phony general on his payroll to bring her to the White House. But he’s the beard. The Prez is in love with Margaret, isn’t he? That’s what the little kidnapping is all about. He wants to embarrass me in my own town.”
Seligman plucked off his radio-phone. “It’s much more complicated than that.”
“But you’re in cahoots with those bastards.”
“I am not. The Republicans are desperate. So they’re trying out a little war game.”
“With the help of my own police department … Grossvogel grabbed Marianna. And he’s the President’s man.”
Seligman tightened his grip on Isaac’s tie. And Isaac couldn’t shove him away. The mayor had been in a hundred brawls. He’d bitten off a mobster’s ear, had killed a crooked policeman, but he couldn’t shake Tim. He tried to punch the Party’s prince, but Seligman whacked him on the side of the head. And for the second time in an hour Isaac Sidel was on his ass. He crawled out of the cockpit, while Timmy grabbed at his clothes.
“Boyle,” he shouted, “get me Bull Latham on the horn.”
“You can’t talk to the Bull,” Seligman said, but Isaac had already closed the door of the cockpit.
They got to a pay telephone. It started to ring. Isaac picked up the phone and heard Bull Latham growl at him. “Sidel, is that you?”
“No, it’s Sinbad the Sailor.”
“Meet me in half an hour.”
“How, Bull? Should I take the angels’ express to D.C.?”
“I’m at the Waldorf, Sidel. Would I leave the Democrats all alone in Manhattan, with a mayor who’s lost half his marbles? … Come up to my room. We’ll have a bit of breakfast.”
3
It had once been the classiest address in the world. Cole Porter kept a suite at the Waldorf. So did General MacArthur and John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Isaac remembered a film he’d seen as a boy, Weekend at the Waldorf. With Lana Turner and Ginger Rogers. It was 1945, and Isaac would walk up from the Lower East Side in his Sunday suit, get past the doorman with a smile, sit in a lobby as big as a battlefield, contemplate among the mirrors and the chandeliers, dream of a very fat future, with Ginger Rogers clinging to his arm. Isaac’s Ginger turned out to be Margaret Tolstoy, a Roumanian orphan who showed up at his junior high school with almond eyes. She called herself Anastasia, the lost princess with holes in her stockings, and Isaac had been chasing after her ever since …
He didn’t want to get knocked on his ass again. Seligman and Grossvogel were like infants compared to the Bull, who was a solid six foot six, and could tackle Mafia chieftains ten at a time. He’d have to anger the Bull. Isaac wanted Marianna and Margaret Tolstoy.
Bull Latham didn’t have a suite at the Waldorf, only a room with a couple of windows that looked out upon another world of windows called midtown Manhattan, where Isaac hated to be. He’d hide out in Harlem or among the ruins of the Lower East Side, gobble yellow rice and black beans at some hole-in-the-wall. And here he was at the Waldorf-Astoria with Bull Latham of the FBI.
Bull had prepared a breakfast table, smoked salmon, with coffee and danishes, from the Waldorf’s kitchen. He had blond hair and wore a paisley robe for breakfast. His fingers seemed fragile for a linebacker. He didn’t have Captain Bart’s fat fists.
They sat across from each other. “Is the salmon good, Sidel?”
“Delicious,” Isaac mu
mbled with a packed mouth.
“It was flown in this morning from Nova Scotia …”
“The Waldorf can’t resist you,” Isaac said. “You played for the Cowboys.”
“You’re anxious about Margaret Tolstoy.”
“I don’t like being fucked by the FBI. You’re her beard, aren’t you, Bull?”
“Can you think of a better one?” Bull said, biting into his danish.
“How did it happen?”
“It was an accident, a fluke.”
“She just waltzed into the White House, huh? Some fluke.”
“The Prez saw her picture and he went apeshit, had to meet Margaret.”
“Was he searching for the Bureau’s best Mata Hari?”
“I had to show him Margaret’s photograph … she was part of his task force.”
“What task force? I thought it exists only on paper, a phantom army.”
“But phantoms can move.”
The Prez had announced his own war against crime. It was the linchpin of his reelection campaign. A task force with a maniacal mission. Wipe out crime in America, make each inner city safe. And now Isaac realized where Barton Grossvogel fit. The President’s anti-crime commissioners were using Elizabeth Street as their own little laboratory. Grossvogel had climbed aboard the President’s ship. And all the pirate-cops at his precinct had suddenly become pioneers in the Prez’s “great urban struggle.” It sickened Isaac.
“And where was Margaret operating?”
“Downtown D.C.”
“A hop away from the White House … is that prick of a president ever going to give Margaret back to me?”
“He’d rather lose the election.”
“I don’t blame him,” Isaac said. “The man’s in love … I blame you, Bull. Margaret was mine, and you tossed her at the Prez. It was Timmy’s idea, wasn’t it? Hook the Prez on one of the government’s whores, compromise him, cut him off at the legs while Tim keeps me dangling. Isaac Sidel and the Prez in love with the same woman. You’re gambling that the Democrats will win, or you wouldn’t have gotten in bed with Tim Seligman.”
Bull finished his danish and smiled. “I’m FBI,” he said. “I can’t afford to go to bed with politicians.”
“You made your deal, Bull. Timmy’s promised to keep you on after the election. But you’ll have to deal with me. Because I’ll break Tim soon as I can. I’ll shove him into the corner like a doll. He’ll sit for eternity … where’s Marianna Storm?”
“Relax. Tim will rescue her at the last minute.”
“What has he promised Captain Bart? Is he going to make that thief your deputy director? I’d like a list of Bart’s safe houses, all the rotten holes where he might store Marianna.”
“Sidel, you’ll be searching for a week. Bart isn’t a dummy. You want Marianna, follow your nose.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“Your nose, Sidel. Pay attention to Seligman’s stink.”
Buy Citizen Sidel Now!
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1997 by Jerome Charyn
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El Bronx (The Isaac Sidel Novels) Page 19
