Three Giuseppinas were lying in a metal grave, like sisters to Sal Rubino’s doll. Three brigandesses in their armor and colored skirts. Isaac undressed one of the dolls, plucked off her helmet, her plume of hair, her armored coat, sleeves, leggings, and shoes. She was a bald sister with dark eyelashes and a red mouth. Isaac picked her up and smashed her against the wall. One arm fell off and revealed a hollow cave that went from her shoulder to her wrist.
“Coffins,” Isaac said. “Come on. We’re taking the other two as hostages.”
“Isaac, we can’t walk out of Gracie with a pair of dolls. Mrs. Dove will catch us. Mario can send us to jail.”
“And expose whatever network he has? Not a chance.”
Each of them carried a doll up the stairs, the clanking armor creating a terrific din.
Mrs. Dove leaned against Rebecca’s staircase, smoking a cigarette. She didn’t blink at Isaac or Joe or the noisy dolls.
“Hello, Dove,” Isaac said, behind his hat.
Mrs. Dove took a Police Special off the bottom stair and aimed it at Isaac’s heart. Isaac wouldn’t cover his own heart with a doll. He smiled. “Do you have a permit, Dove?”
“You’re trespassing,” she said.
Isaac used his own diseased intelligence, like Auguste Dupin. Dove was no simple chatelaine. She was part of Mario’s gang.
“Shoot me, Dove. I don’t have all day … I’m the Pink Commish. How can I trespass in a building I’m paid to protect?”
And the two constables walked out the mansion door with their dolls, Barbarossa dreaming of Dove’s black and bitter eyes.
23
There was bewilderment at One PP. The Pink Commish had introduced his own strange museum. He kept a pair of warrior women in his office, huge dolls in body armor, right next to the begonia. He would hold conversations with the dolls, address them both as Giuseppina. But none of his men could tease the dolls’ history out of Isaac. He’d turn mute, stare at the walls … until Isaac’s own black giant came in to examine these giant dolls.
“Isaac,” Sweets said, “help us out. Are they souvenirs from one of your battlefronts?”
Isaac roused himself from his own reverie. “Has Mario been screaming? Did he tell you that we raped Rebecca? Did you know that her fucking housekeeper carries a gun?”
“The dolls, Isaac, what about the dolls?”
“Lemme finish. Mario is a user, Sweets. He smuggles dope, and the mansion is his hideaway.”
“Then we’ll bust the son of a bitch. Is that what you want? We could bring the whole City down on our backs. Return the dolls.”
“No.”
“You captured them from Gracie, didn’t you? That’s why Mother Courage pulled her gun.”
“Which Mother Courage?”
“The housekeeper, Mrs. Dove.”
“The dolls are carriers, Sweets, drug boats. To bring heroin into the United States.”
“Did you find any heroin in the house?”
“No. Not yet.”
“But the Black Stocking Twins did one of their famous searches and seizures.”
“Sweets, we weren’t even wearing our masks.”
“What happens now?”
“We wait.”
“For God and the Devil?”
“Both,” Isaac said. “It’s a question of who comes first.”
“Watch yourself. God might get crazy and steal your Glock.”
Sweets walked out and left Isaac alone with his pair of Giuseppinas. But the Pink Commish didn’t have to wait very long. God and the Devil showed up in the person of Frederic LeComte, wearing his habitual blue on blue. His mouth seemed missing. His nostrils sucked air without any real sense of a nose. His profile was like some artificial creation. LeComte was the nearest thing to an invisible man. He could have faded into any background with his blue coloring. It bothered Isaac, who was his protégé. LeComte had put his ass on the line and named Isaac Justice’s first Alexander Hamilton Fellow, a philosopher-sheriff who would go from town to town, giving speeches on the vagaries of crime. But Isaac had disappointed Justice and embarrassed the hell out of LeComte. He’d fallen in love with LeComte’s own undercover agent, Margaret Tolstoy; he’d shot Sal Rubino during his time as a Hamilton Fellow; he’d befriended Jerry D., LeComte’s number-one nemesis.
“You’ve been ducking me,” growled the Pink Commish.
“I haven’t.”
“You’ve been ducking me, I said. You closed the door. I can’t get to Papa Cassidy or Sal, and you’ve been letting Margaret scribble Valentine cards to Frannie Meyers. I don’t like it.”
“She can’t stick to one fiancé. The girl has to keep her options open. You might move into an early grave.”
“LeComte, you want your microphones and mine picking up that little patter? The prince of Justice threatening his own Hamilton Fellow?”
“It’s not a threat. You’ve been messing around with some dangerous people.”
“Like whom? Montezuma’s ghost?”
“You’re a pisser, Isaac. You really are. That man was the overlord of Palermo.”
“Until you turned him around. And he got careless. This is America, LeComte. Federal informants don’t usually hire someone to cancel their own mom and dad.”
“Barbarossa isn’t ‘someone,’ Isaac. He’s the best hitter in town.”
“Sure. That’s why he’s my chauffeur. He hits all the time.”
“And helps you steal objects from the mayor’s museum. You’ll have to give them back.”
“Fuck you, Fred.”
“You’re muddying the waters, meddling in a critical investigation. We have the whole Sicilian drug mart on the run. Should I tell you the street value of the heroin and cocaine that’s involved?”
“Street value doesn’t mean shit. It’s an invention of the FBI.”
“But you could never guess the volume of traffic that’s coming through.”
“Where? In the bodies of Sicilian dolls? Who’s your partner? Peppinninu? You sent Frannie and his children downtown to stomp on Roberto DiAngelis.”
“Did not. That was Sal’s idea.”
“And who owns Sal? The Bureau.”
“Don’t get naive on me, Isaac. Sal is in business for himself. Don Roberto was double-crossing him. He tried to have Sal killed. He was the biggest heroin smuggler in the United States.”
“LeComte, I met the man. He roosted in the cellars. He was a puppeteer.”
“It was an act. Jerry D. was trying to impress you. Heroin and coke, that’s what the war inside the Rubinos was all about. Who would control the distribution, Jerry or Sal.”
“The melamed couldn’t have been involved. He despises drugs.”
“Dream a little more, Isaac. He was the mastermind.”
“The melamed had Jerry’s soldiers killed for handling drugs.”
“Not for handling, Isaac. For ripping off the melamed’s couriers and mules.”
“I would have known. I’m not blind. I have my intelligence teams. How long has this been going on?”
“Years and years, Isaac. Years and years.”
“And you never told me?”
“How could I trust you? You crawled into bed with Jerry and the melamed.”
“That’s why you made me your Hamilton Fellow. To get me as far as you could from the field.”
“It was only one of the reasons. I admired you, Isaac. I wanted you in my camp. You have your poetry. You were much more than a cop. You cared, Isaac, cared about all the little kids.”
“Yeah, I was your private shill. With his own baseball team. The Delancey Giants … I’m going to Palermo, LeComte. And don’t you try to stop me.”
“Jesus, you’ll ruin everything. What’s in Palermo, Isaac?”
“Young Robert. I’d like to hear from him why he set up his own dad. He might be able to give me a lesson in loyalty.”
“Don Roberto wasn’t his father. The boy was an orphan. He was apprenticed to Roberto when he was eight or
nine.”
“As a puppeteer?”
“No, no. He was the next Peppinninu. He could carve like a motherfucker, copy the patina of old, rotting wood.”
“And the dolls in my office are his? They have Robert’s mark?”
“Naturally.”
“Ah, the orphan artist. Learned to hate his master, huh? Confused him with some dream dad.”
“It’s simpler than that. Roberto was cheating him, taking all the profits.”
“And Sal got to the orphan, huh?”
“How? From his wheelchair? It was your long-lost love, Margaret Tolstoy.”
“I forgot,” Isaac said, his heart boiling up the blackest kind of blood. “She’s Sal’s arms and legs. Margaret was the conduit. Did she seduce young Robert?”
“Didn’t have to. The boy was game.”
“Then why did he bolt?”
“Wasn’t cowardice, Isaac. We advised him to scram for a while, to crawl back into the nest. We flew him to Palermo. Margaret and Fran were his babysitters.”
“Margaret and Fran,” Isaac said. “Margaret and Fran.”
“Isaac, I can’t let you go to Palermo. I’m sorry.”
“Will you steal my passport?”
“I’ll do worse.”
“Good. Because I intend to meet with the kid.”
“I can deliver him to your office.”
“I don’t want him delivered.”
“You’ll never survive Palermo,” LeComte said. “Palermo chews up police chiefs.”
“If I don’t come back, LeComte, I’ll will you the dolls.”
“You’ll will them to me anyway.”
“Not a chance. The dolls stay in this office until I’m pronounced dead.”
It took a phone call. Isaac was allowed to enter the melamed’s retreat on Cleveland Place, where he lived with Jerry and his daughter, Eileen, who was Jerry’s wife. But Jerry had been absent from the household. He was either at the Baron di Napoli or with Raoul and Alicia in Bath Beach. The melamed had to share his daughter’s sorrows. She’d badgered Jerry, asked him to steal Raoul from his comare so that she could raise him as her own child. She’d suffered through Jerry’s war with Sal and she required some visible benefit—the boy Raoul. She wouldn’t scheme with Jerry’s captains, wouldn’t hand out bribes. She sat at home, preparing meals for people who had disappeared on her. Isaac could read all the pathology in her face, like some fucking doctor of the soul. She was a widow with a live husband. And Isaac couldn’t console her.
But he did eat her Jewish pasta, sitting in Jerry’s chair.
The seat next to Isaac’s had once belonged to Teddy Boy, alias Nose, Jerry’s little older brother, who’d become a rat for the FBI and was killed in Central Park during a ball game between Isaac’s Delancey Giants and Cardinal Jim’s Manhattan Knights. Eileen had been fond of that murderous halfwit. She mourned Nose with the empty chair, blamed Isaac for Nose’s death. He was careful around Eileen, like some penitent. It was a cockeyed world where the Pink Commish had to apologize for his very own life.
“Delicious,” he said, his mouth stuffed with noodles.
“I’m happy for you,” Eileen said, with a cigarette dangling from one side of her face. Her hair had gone white during that war inside the Family, when her husband was in constant danger and she didn’t hear from him for a month.
“Isaac, have you seen the little prince?”
“Yes.” He couldn’t lie to Eileen.
“My own father shields him from me.”
“Eileen,” the melamed said. “Eileen.”
“You hypocrite. My husband has Raoul, and what do I have? I’m his wife. The little prince belongs to me.”
“But his mother is entitled—”
“Entitled to what? She’s a whore.”
“But she’s the one who gave birth to Raoul, she had the labor pains.”
“Like a common cow. Jerry can have his comare. I want the boy.”
“Isaac,” the melamed said, the veins bunching on his forehead in a blue design. “Will you reason with my daughter?”
“He has nothing to do with this discussion. He killed the baby.”
“The baby was on the rampage,” the melamed told her.
“Honor him,” Eileen said. “He was my brother-in-law.”
“He sold us to the FBI.”
“What could he sell? His pants? His shoes? Jerry never sat in jail because of him … Isaac, your soldiers didn’t have to shoot Ted. They could have captured the baby.”
“Eileen,” the melamed cried. “He wasn’t capturable.”
“I want Raoul. Isaac, you kidnapped him once. Kidnap him again.”
“Wish I could,” Isaac said. “But it would cause a catastrophe.”
She glared at Isaac and the melamed. “You had your pasta. Get out of my kitchen.”
Isaac tramped into the melamed’s room and sat beside the melamed on a narrow bed. The melamed had no one to warm his bones. He’d never taken a mistress.
“She didn’t even offer us dessert, that daughter of mine.”
“Ah, Iz. She’s upset. Jerry’s with Alicia all the time.”
“She drove him crazy. Raoul, Raoul, Raoul.”
“She can’t have a child, so she dreams.”
“I’m hungry,” the melamed said. “I don’t think straight without ice cream.”
“We could go to the corner.”
“What corner? I’m bedridden. I haven’t recovered from my stroke.”
“Stop it, Iz. You run to Ratner’s twice a week.”
“I’d be lost without my own cafeteria. I’d starve to death. But I’m glad you could come. Eileen’s more human with another man in the house, even if she hates us both for not bringing her Raoul … Isaac, what’s wrong? I couldn’t enjoy the noodles. You kept giving me funny looks at the table.”
“I’m old-fashioned,” Isaac said. “I always thought you wouldn’t lie to me beyond a certain point.”
“That’s true. But sometimes the point can change.”
“Especially when it involves drugs.”
“You know my policy. I’ll hurt anyone, even a captain, who touches that crap.”
“Some lullaby, Iz. Don Roberto smuggled for you. You’re the biggest dealer in town.”
“LeComte’s been singing in your ear.”
“No. He supplied one detail. That your fight with Sal Rubino wasn’t a popularity contest. It was about the Family’s own Sicilian connection.”
“Isaac, I’ll faint if you start giving me a sermon on Peppinninu. Can I help it if you decided to fall in love with dolls that duel?”
“Ah, they weren’t made for dueling, Iz. They’re fragile under their battle clothes. They have hollow insides like any coffin that carries dope.”
“The dolls were never my idea. But we couldn’t let Sal ruin us. He was getting rich off Jerry’s own vassal, Roberto the puppet maker. We had to take Roberto from him.”
“That’s how the war started?”
“We collected Roberto. Sal decided to kill our men.”
“And Montezuma?”
“He was caught in the middle. But we had the dolls, Isaac. We had the dolls.”
“Sal could have hired his own carpenters.”
“He did. But they couldn’t produce quality stuff. And that jeopardized the whole venture. You have to have the illusion of an illusion, or it wouldn’t work. Museums were involved. And galleries with sensible clients. One mediocre doll would have soured the deal. That’s what I learnt as a melamed. You want to cheat, stick to the authentic as much as you can. Roberto was nothing until the boy came along.”
“Young Robert.”
“He had the magic hands. That puppet maker plucked him out of a street in Palermo. He had no name, no identity in America, nothing. He was Roberto’s nameless wonder. The boy worked day and night, and that wasn’t enough. The dolls were perishable, Isaac. They could only be used once. But they wouldn’t break in transit, they wouldn’t come ap
art at the seams. They had no seams, and they couldn’t spill your goods. Robert glued a doll in his own special way. He filled in every crack. He sanded down the imperfections. And then he had to create the bumps and scars of a Peppinninu. The boy was worth millions. It boggles the mind. Took him twenty hours to seal the goods inside a doll. It was snug as the tomb of a god. You couldn’t get in without a chisel and a pair of heavy hammers. You had to manufacture your own split line. And if the split was too deep, the bags would break and you’d have yourself a heroin storm.”
“Iz, I’m ashamed. A melamed talking like a drug lord.”
“Sonny, I did what I had to do. We jumped into the market to stay alive. And don’t let LeComte fool you. He has his own little government.”
“And Montezuma was part of that government, right?”
“Isaac, you have a problem. You’re a police chief. Your eyes and your ass are locked in Manhattan. You have to start thinking global. Nothing moved without Montezuma. He found the nameless wonder for Roberto. He stroked the mafiosi in America and Palermo. He was LeComte’s partner and registered spy … until he bumped into a crazy wall. Barbarossa. And now there’s complete chaos. Shipments are lost. Customers complain. Dolls that should have gone to some museum end up at a puppet show. Their arms and legs start bleeding powdered blood. And the young maestro is missing.”
“He’s gone to Palermo,” Isaac said.
“We know that. But we can’t rush in like strangers. It’s perilous without Montezuma. I’ve been negotiating to get the boy back. But I can never tell who I’m negotiating with. The wind? The trees? A don who died last month?”
“I’m going to Palermo,” Isaac said.
“Isaac, it’s not a city for strangers. It’s hard enough for us. Jerry has cousins in Palermo, and he’s still a stranger.”
“I’m going to Palermo.”
“Always the crusader, ready to rescue a lost boy.”
“No, Iz. You have it wrong. I’m hoping the boy will rescue me.”
24
He wouldn’t let Barbarossa accompany him on his crusade. “It’s perilous,” he said, copying the melamed’s diction. “Both of us out of the country. Anything could happen.”
Montezuma's Man (The Isaac Sidel Novels) Page 14
