“It’s me, Isaac, the Pink Commish.”
“The cuckold,” she said.
“Becky, that isn’t nice. I separated from the Countess Kathleen. Haven’t had a wife in years.”
“I’m not talking about Kathleen … I’m having a breakdown, Isaac. You ran from me. You fell in love with the biggest whore the FBI ever had.”
“I won’t discuss Anastasia,” he said.
“You’ll discuss.” She started to cry. Her tears were enormous. “I can’t walk. My legs are too weak.”
“Come on, you have your own gym in the attic. You work out with Mario every morning. You’re in better shape than I am.”
“Mario, tell the klutz.”
“The mayor can’t move,” Mario said.
“What do her doctors say?”
“Temporary paralysis.”
“Temporary paralysis?” Isaac muttered. “Who the hell hasn’t had temporary paralysis? Means nothing.”
“Isaac, I don’t have a single Democrat on my side. The whole machine is against me. And I can’t afford to quit. I’ll lose Gracie Mansion. It’s my house, Isaac. I couldn’t live anywhere else.”
“Come on, it’s a fucking museum four days a week. Do you want tourists in your living room all the time?… I’ll find you a flat. I’m the PC.”
“She’s not looking for a flat,” Mario said. “Listen to the lady.”
“Then what can I do?” Isaac asked, shrugging his shoulders and watching a fireboat race around the bend of Ward’s Island.
“You can sit where she sits.”
“Mario, I’m dense today. I don’t have your lightning mind. I brood a lot. I look at my navel.”
“Isaac …”
“I give Becky the kiss of death and run for mayor, is that it? Well, I’m not Murder, Incorporated. I don’t do hits.”
“She won’t campaign, Isaac. And she can’t win. I’ve canvased all the precincts. If she ran against Nikita Khrushchev, she’d only get twenty-nine percent of the vote.”
“Khrushchev is dead.”
“That’s what I told you. She can’t win.”
“Even if Becky bows out, I still might not get the nomination.”
“It’s a cinch.”
“And the Republicans?”
“They’ll lie down and endorse the Democratic nominee. They wouldn’t dare go up against Sidel, the law-and-order man.”
“But the Republicans have Malik.”
“A Turk doesn’t have a chance in this town … they’ll come begging and ask you to appoint a few Republican commissioners. And we’ll say yes.”
“Ah, you’ll be my campaign manager.”
“Only if you want me, Isaac”
“But I don’t have a dime. I can’t run without cash.”
“No problem. We’ll get whatever we need from Rebecca’s Reelection Committee … with her approval, of course.”
“A touch of fiscal magic, huh Mario?”
“It’s perfectly legal.”
“And all you’ll ask is that I save a room for Rebecca at the mansion.”
“That’s about it. Rebecca would rather have her Isaac than some pol who’s been stabbing her in the back … the town loves you. You’ll have to get used to that.”
“But will it love me when I can’t deliver?”
Rebecca started to cackle in her rocking chair. “I told you he’s a klutz … Isaac, this is New York. Nobody can deliver.”
“Then why should I run?”
“He’s sulking,” Becky said. “Because you’ll be a player, that’s why.”
“I am a player.”
“No, you’re my police chief. The cardinal’s a player, not you … Mario, will ya prove my point? I could have a hemorrhage sitting in this chair.”
Mario went back inside the mansion and returned with a telephone. “Isaac, anyone in particular you haven’t been able to reach?”
“Papa Cassidy,” Isaac said. “He’s shooting lions in the Sahara.”
Rebecca started cackling again. “That’s Papa’s standard line with retards.”
Mario dialed Papa Cassidy, whispered a few words, then hung up. “Papa’s out of town. He’ll get back to us.”
“After he finishes with the lions,” Isaac said, grinning at Mario and Rebecca Karp. He leaned against the porch rails. The porch had begun to rot. Isaac didn’t hunger for this mansion. Rebecca could have her fire chiefs and her chair. Isaac would live without Hell Gate.
He was planning to exit when the phone started ringing. Rebecca plucked it out of its cradle, and Isaac discovered a telephone in his hand.
“Sidel here,” he said.
“I thought this was the mayor’s mansion.”
“It is, Papa. But Becky asked me to take the call. I hear you’re in the doll business these days.”
“You’re mixed up, Sidel. You must be crazy.”
“Tell me, Papa, is the Sahara very far from Palermo? Lions and dolls, that’s a beautiful combination … how’s the child bride? How’s Delia St. John?”
“Delia’s not a child.”
“Does she still dance?”
“Only in my bed,” Papa told him and hung up on the Pink Commish.
The mayor had fallen asleep. Isaac and Mario stood at the far end of the porch.
“Is Joey wearing his white glove?”
“Mario, you could ask him yourself.”
“I don’t get along with Barbarossa.”
“Is that why you had your own man drive me up to Gracie?”
“Just ask him about Montezuma.”
“What’s all the mystery?”
“Drugs, Isaac, drugs. Barbarossa deals. And so does Papa … those dolls of yours are a drug scam.”
“Mario, keep quiet. I’m the cop. You’re a secretary.” But Isaac saw dark spots between his eyes. “Montezuma,” he muttered.
“Ask Joe. The Maf is bringing horse into the country. That’s what the dolls are there for.”
“They’re museum pieces,” Isaac said.
“That’s the best alibi there is. Collectors’ items. You can move them from gallery to gallery under the noses of every narc. The material arrives, you work a little switch, and presto!”
“But there aren’t enough dolls to go around. I met with Rubino. I saw his doll, the brigandess. He keeps her in a safe. And Jerry DiAngelis has five Christian knights in his closet.”
“Isaac, they all have hollow insides. I’ll bet you my salary.”
The dark spots disappeared. Isaac saw a cockroach climb the wall of Gracie Mansion. He wasn’t surprised. Rebecca had roach problems at her manor in the park.
“Mario, how did you learn about the dolls?”
“Isaac, I go places. I’m Rebecca’s eyes and ears.”
The Pink Commish climbed down off the porch. Mario called to him. “Isaac, don’t forget us. I’m counting on you to be Rebecca’s candidate. If you won’t help us, I’ll find somebody who will.”
“Yeah,” Isaac said, “like Montezuma maybe.”
20
Montezuma.
It was a call to some battleground, but Isaac couldn’t say where. Joe had been the marine, not him. Isaac was the superfly caught in Mafia shit. He paged Barbarossa, and Barbarossa got back to him. He was at Schiller’s club.
“Meet me under the Williamsburg Bridge.”
“Boss—”
“That’s where I conducted all my business when I was a kid. I had my own little sugar market. Leo was my partner, with his short pants.”
“But you were glocked under the bridge. It brought you bad luck.”
“I don’t need luck, Joey. I have you.”
Isaac got there first, to the little patch of Sheriff Street that hadn’t been lost to housing projects or the ruins of time. It was a dark open-air cave that had once had its own mechanics’ row of shops, in a New York where labor had some value, where artisans flourished, where men could hammer angels into any kind of door. The artisans had tiny hats on their head
s and thrived on burnt potatoes and rust. They didn’t wear plastic guns, like Sidel. They didn’t carry Glocks.
He heard the crack of Barbarossa’s feet against the cinders on the ground. They stood face to face in the dark, Barbarossa’s eyes like blue worms.
“Montezuma,” Isaac said.
“Boss, couldn’t we have coffee and cake at one of your cafeterias?”
“I like it here.”
“You were with Mario Klein, weren’t you, boss? I figured he’d get to you sooner or later. But I didn’t want to bad-mouth the mayor’s man … he was my biggest customer.”
“You sold drugs to Rebecca’s private secretary?”
“I practically lived at Gracie Mansion. He could have fed half a tribe with his habit. He was broke all the time. Then he comes to me with a proposition. He asks me to off this family of dealers, independents who had their own mom-and-pop store. ‘Nasty people,’ says Mario. ‘They’re ruining the works.’ And he tells me to go and talk to Montezuma, a badass out of Palermo who looked like an Aztec, an Indian. He’d ratted out all his partners in the Sicilian Maf. The FBI had turned him around. He was dealing on his own and doing undercover stuff. I met with the rat. He offers me a hundred thousand to hit the mom and pop. I say, ‘Montezuma, what have they done to you?’ He won’t answer. I find out from my sources that this is a crazy request. Not only is he partners with the mom and pop, partners under the table, but they’re his mom and pop.”
“He asked you to slap his own mother and father? That’s inhuman. I’d have killed this Montezuma.”
“That’s exactly what I did. First we had a fight … and then Drug Enforcement comes down on my ass. Montezuma was their baby.”
“What happened to the mom and pop?”
“They got slapped.”
“Joey, were they puppeteers, this mom and pop?… why didn’t you warn me about the doll situation, that it was all about drugs?”
“I couldn’t,” Barbarossa said. “You had Peppinninu on the brain. You were in love with Giuseppina and the paladins. Boss, I didn’t want to break your heart.”
“That’s grand. I have a fucking driver who’s into metaphysics, who worries about my heart and soul. You could have gotten both of us killed. You waltzed me around like a blind man.”
“I was careful, boss.”
“So careful we ran into Crazy Corners and wouldn’t have survived if Margaret hadn’t been in the back room.”
“LeComte wouldn’t let you croak. He loves you too much.”
“Like you love Marilyn, huh?”
“I’m going to marry that girl. I’m not moving from this bridge until you accept me as your son-in-law.”
Isaac was silent. He looked like some clay man, standing in the dark. Then his mouth seemed to crack open. “I’ll accept you, accept you in hell.”
“That’s a pity, boss. We’ll have to rot together under the bridge.”
“You’re my driver. You’ll go where I tell you to go.”
He lunged at Barbarossa, who swerved around Isaac and sent him flying into the cinders.
“I’m always landing on my ass … once you’re glocked, you never really recover.”
“Boss, I was glocked too.”
“Ah, there’s no comparison. I was in a coma,” Isaac said.
Barbarossa stooped to lift him off the bed of cinders.
“Don’t help me,” Isaac said and rose to his feet. The dank air comforted him. He remembered the nation of young thieves that would barter under the bridge, hawking whatever wares they had. He’d been much more powerful as a boy with boxes of sugar in his coat than any police commissioner with thirty thousand troops.
“Don Roberto wasn’t trampled to death because of his puppet theater. He had other talents, didn’t he, Joey?”
“Yeah, he smuggled dope. He must have taken on Montezuma’s traffic.”
Isaac followed Barbarossa out from under that patch of Sheriff Street. He limped.
“Where are we going?”
“To Chinaman’s Chance.”
“I’m not in the mood for disco,” Isaac said.
“Boss, it’s a doper’s paradise, the biggest in town.”
“Joey, if you had a falling out with Mario, then who’s supplying him with drugs?”
“Take a guess.”
Isaac started to groan. “Frannie Meyers.” And they climbed into Isaac’s Dodge.
21
It was a bottle club on the fringe of Spanish Harlem, housed in some cellar a few blocks east of the Harlem Meer, that dead body of water at the upper limit of Central Park. The police would shut Chinaman’s Chance, but it kept opening again and again. It had no owner of record, and the property should have been condemned, but no City marshals had come to seize its assets. And Isaac realized who its “owners” were: Mario Klein and the City of New York. The Chinaman’s must have been Marios den.
The Pink Commish was on fire. He went down into the cave with Barbarossa, inside a building that seemed to have no doors. The bouncer wanted to frisk him, but Barbarossa got in the way. “It’s all right, Tiny. He’s good people.”
And Isaac fell into a storm of bodies dancing in the dark. He’d gone from one cave into another. He could recognize Fran’s own paladins, his baby warriors who danced with little chiquitas, street girls who looked sixteen going on eleven. He was on fire. Music pounded from the walls, songs that were outside Isaac’s vocabulary. He was an old-fashioned constable who believed in lullabies. He’d hardly ever danced, not even at his daughter’s weddings or when Isaac himself had married the Countess Kathleen. He was like a bear with a bunch of left feet. His only rhythm would come in the midst of battle.
He bumped into Delia St. John on the Chinaman’s floor. She was dancing alone. She wore a fabric that reminded him of the chain mail on a knight. But she had no garments under that “mail,” and Isaac wouldn’t peek at her breasts or her pubic hair. Malik had been one of her boyfriends. She’d slept with magistrates and lieutenant governors. She was a pornographer’s model, playing the perennial child, until Papa Cassidy married her and took her off the market.
“Hello, Delia,” Isaac said, taking her into his arms and doing his own kind of bearish walk.
“Hey, I like this slow stuff, Uncle Isaac.”
He’d taught himself how to shuffle with the Salome of Chinaman’s Chance.
“I thought Papa keeps you locked in the bedroom.”
“He does,” Delia said, “but I found the key … and Papa went away.”
“Yeah, he’s shooting lions in the Sahara … and Sicily.”
“Papa hates lions, Uncle Isaac.”
He could have kidnapped Salome and disturbed Papa’s little vacation, but he wouldn’t separate Delia from her dance. He’d get to Papa on his own.
He abandoned Salome and shoved deeper into the bottle club. It was a full house. Narcs and bandidos and coca brats and the prince of secretaries, Mario Klein, dancing with a blonde or a brunette, because Isaac couldn’t distinguish colors in this cave. He stole Mario from his dancing partner, seized him by his shirt collar, and trapped him behind a water pipe.
“Montezuma, huh? Are you hocking Rebecca’s furniture? Are you planning holdups? How’s your fucking habit?”
“Isaac, you shouldn’t listen to a thief … I do a couple of lines a day. It’s nothing. And take your hands off … you work for me, Isaac.”
“I work for the mayor.”
“I am the mayor when Becky is in her rocking chair. Remember that.”
“Then fire me, Mario. I’d love it. But the next time you start arranging murders from the mansion, I’ll knock you off at the legs. Mario, who’s your master? Sal? LeComte? Or the melamed?”
“All three,” Mario said. “But you have it wrong. Until Rebecca leaves her porch, I’m the number-one player in town.”
“Yeah, I’ll remember,” Isaac said, twisting Mario’s ears. But six men were suddenly behind him, and none of them was dancing. They wore leather coats, li
ke Isaac’s musketeers. They were part of his brood, policemen assigned to Rebecca Karp. The mayor had her own detail of six bodyguards and six other escorts. A dozen men who were at Rebecca’s call around the clock. They would accompany her on official rides when Rebecca greeted foreign kings, queens, and presidents. They formed her motorcade. They were the tallest, cleanest, most clever cops, hand-picked by Isaacs own commissioners and Isaac himself. The chief of the detail was Lieutenant Albert “Wig” Wiggens, the most decorated cop in the City after Barbarossa. Wig had been shot in the head. He’d fallen out a window, chasing bandits. He’d belonged to Special Services and OCCB, the Organized Crime–Control Bureau. He was a black man with a bit of Indian blood, like Barbarossa. His enemies swore that he was part of the Purple Gang, Harlem’s own assassination bureau, with branches in Detroit and Memphis and New Orleans. But the Purples had become a mythical gang, almost divine. No one could capture them, and no one had sighted them on Morningside Drive or Mount Morris Park.
Isaac was drawn to Wig. He’d lent him to Rebecca Karp. Wig had a soft, melancholy voice. He wedged himself between Mario and the Pink Commish.
“Wig, we have a real problem.”
“How’s that, Commissioner Isaac?”
“I’ll have to strangle Mario if he doesn’t drag his ass out of here.”
“But it’s his place.”
“Wig, this is a fucking bottle club. It doesn’t have a liquor license. In fact, it doesn’t have a license at all. It shouldn’t exist.”
“But it does exist. That’s the fun part.”
“I could close it down.”
“It would open somewhere else. The Chinaman’s already had fifteen, sixteen addresses.”
“It’s a doper’s paradise,” Isaac said.
“You’ve been listening to Joey too long. Commissioner, an awful lot of cops come here to dance … cops and the mayor’s people.”
“I could shut down the whole fucking detail. I could reassign you, Wig. You and all your men.”
“But meanwhile I’m sworn to protect the mayor and her people … let him go, Commissioner, please.”
“Wig,” Isaac said, “you won’t win.”
Isaac released Mario Klein and wandered away from Wig. His eyes were smoking. He was on fire. But he couldn’t have a shoot-out with his own policemen in Chinaman’s Chance. It would have been a silly ending to his own career. He cornered Frannie Meyers behind a table. Frannie was snorting with a couple of teenagers, little girls with frizzled hair and a zombie’s white complexion. The girls scattered when they saw Isaac’s eyes.
Montezuma's Man (The Isaac Sidel Novels) Page 12
