“Are you sure you want to tell me that?”
“Isaac, my lawyers can wrap you in a blanket. They’d destroy you in open court. You’re a police commisioner, a baby.”
“Montezuma’s alive.”
“Of course he’s alive. And he’s running from Robert. You put him up at the mansion. That’s clever, I have to admit.”
“You and Izzy are as bad as LeComte.”
“Isaac, it’s dangerous. Robert’s making up his own rules. He killed Sal.”
“Robert’s here … in Manhattan?”
“He’s a citizen,” Jerry said. “Robert was naturalized. He can come and go.”
“And you’re scared of one little doll maker?”
“He has those cavalieri behind him, the little kings.”
“The kings never travel.”
“Yeah, but they can hire an awful lot of substitutes to travel for them … Isaac, we’re talking Sicily. That’s one crazy island. Robert must have a Christ complex. He’s doing God this year. I have six lieutenants guarding Alicia alone.”
“And you let Raoul come up to my office without an escort?”
“Who’s gonna harm him inside Headquarters?… and I had soldiers stationed in the street. I’m Jerry D. I don’t take chances.”
“And what am I supposed to do?”
“Find Robert. You found him once … in Palermo. Find him again. Meet with that maniac. Because I can go to the cannons, Isaac. I’ll fight the cavalieri, I’ll steal Palermo from them, I’ll throw Sicily right into the sea.”
“Jerry, you couldn’t take the Bronx. Forget Sicily.”
Isaac shook hands with the little prince and walked out of Rowena’s.
32
He was lonely for the dolls, but he didn’t return to his roost. He was sick of Republicans and Democrats. He envied Rebecca and her rocking chair. She’d become her own Manhattan melodrama. Would any other metropolis allow a sitting mayor to retire from politics and rock in an enormous upright cradle?
Sidel had his usual eyes in his ass. A gang of monkeys was following him. He didn’t like it. Was it the little kings, or their American surrogates? Had young Robert come to claim the two Giuseppinas? Isaac wasn’t giving them back. His warrior ladies were the only ones who could relax him. He’d go for his Glock if he had to, he’d shoot to kill.
He avoided his flat on Rivington Street. Robert’s henchmen could dim the lights in the hall, catch Isaac, and toss him down the stairwell. What would he dream of during that descent? His few moments with Marilyn when she was a little girl? His barterings under the Williamsburg Bridge? His first encounters with Anastasia? His fall into adulthood had left him with very little. He had nothing but his own mayoralty to look forward to. He had to find a rocking chair and put it next to Rebecca’s.
He went to Ratner’s because it was an open place. He could view his adversaries while he drank lime jello and munched on poppy-seed cakes. Only what would a gang of substitute kings look like? He had six poppy-seed cakes. And then he groaned. LeComte had walked into the cafeteria wearing a blue leather coat, like some Neo-Nazi.
“Aren’t you going to ask me to sit down, Mr. Mayor?”
“LeComte, I could shoot your fucking eyes out. No jury would convict the PC.”
“I’m proud of you,” LeComte said. “My protégé.”
“Are you listening, LeComte? This is my cafeteria. Anything goes.”
“They screamed on the Hill when I named you my first Hamilton Fellow. ‘That bum,’ they said. ‘He’s the Pink Commish.’ And I answered, ‘What a strategist. He excites people. He’s good for the system.’ And they said, ‘A panther’s never good. He’s wild. You’ll have to kill him one day, Frederic … build a cage around him that’s so big, he’ll never be able to tell the difference.’”
“Is that what you are, LeComte, my circus trainer?”
“Not bad,” LeComte said, inside the comfort of his Neo-Nazi coat. “Mr. Mayor, you’re becoming a poet.”
“LeComte, you have it wrong. I’m part of your animal act. You’re the poet. You created Peppinninu.”
“Not really. It was Montezuma’s idea. I stole it from him … and the Maf. Isaac, you have to understand the equation. If you want to control drugs, you enter the marketplace. The Drug Enforcement people haven’t done shit. What does it mean to kill a few banditos? The empire is always there. It has its own life, outside the banditos. We call it skeletal structures.’ You can’t destroy a skel. You can only build onto it. So I built.”
“Your own fucking machine.”
“I borrowed, I drank the Mafia’s blood. And now I run the Palermo Pony Express.”
“Pony Express. That’s cute, LeComte. I hope I smashed a couple of the ponies’ legs.”
“You did. That’s the thrill of it. That’s what I was counting on.”
“A fucking chaos factor.”
“Jerry DiAngelis is finished. He doesn’t have a dime.”
“And Sal Rubino’s dead.”
“An unfortunate accident. He had a morbid love of dolls. He was a sentimentalist, raised on puppet theater. But he shouldn’t have let young Robert into the house. He shouldn’t have let young Robert into the house.”
“You’re repeating yourself, LeComte.”
“Am I? Robert suckered him, sweettalked Sal, told him he was bringing a new doll, and Sal couldn’t resist. Robert cuts his babysitter to pieces, baptizes Sal in his own tub, and steals back the queen of Sal’s collection.”
“Giuseppina,” Isaac said.
“I told you. He was a sentimentalist. You can’t trust a doll maker when it comes to his own dolls, and Robert was never reliable. He had a notion in his head to recall whatever dolls he could.”
“What about my collection of Giuseppinas?”
“He’s superstitious about police stations.”
“Who was the babysitter?”
“What?” LeComte said.
“The bodyguard Robert ripped with his knife.”
“One of my Mormons. Lowenblum. A very good boy.”
“And where was Margaret?”
LeComte ordered a poppy-seed cake. But he didn’t clutch it in his fist, like a boy from the Lower East Side. He dissected the cake with his knife and fork. It was a brutal operation. Isaac couldn’t imagine a poppy-seed cake devoured in such surgical bits.
“She’s gone native,” LeComte said, while the bones in his jaw worked overtime.
“Will you translate that fucking FBI parlance?”
“Margaret has flown the coop. You think Robert could have gotten upstairs if Margaret had been around?”
“Where is she? In Odessa?”
“Palermo. She’s underground.”
“Can’t you shape a deal with the cavalieri and get her back?”
“Isaac, the cavalieri don’t shape deals.”
“Then snap your fingers, LeComte. You can rob commandos from all your agencies. Have them parachute onto the roof of the Palme Hotel.”
“They’d get stripped of their chutes before they ever landed on the roof. It’s Palermo, Isaac, the city of corpses. You know that.”
“Then how come Papa Cassidy can sit at the Palme like his own little king?”
“He was only a supplicant, Isaac. He brought dollars into Palermo. And you should be nicer to him. He’s going to be the treasurer of your campaign.”
“I’ll kill him first.”
“Isaac, you can’t win without Papa Cassidy. He draws big money.”
“Then I’ll go for the little bucks.”
“There are no little bucks in Manhattan.”
“You’re wrong. I’ll collect dimes from grandmas. I won’t take your drug money. How does it feel, LeComte, to be the number-one traficante? The FBI feeding horse to kids …”
LeComte had a sliver of cake on his lip. He touched his mouth with a handkerchief. “The horse was there … and now it’s gone. I took it off the street.”
“You, LeComte? It was me and my musketeers.”
“And that was written into my scenario. I centralized the distribution. And then I chopped off its arm, thanks to my own cavaliere.”
“I’m not your cavaliere, LeComte. I’m the worst dream you ever had in your life.”
He was meticulous now, because he had to retrieve Anastasia from this new black hole she was in. LeComte might have been lying, but it wouldn’t have made much difference. The Pink Commish was returning to Palermo. If Margaret was out on some mission for LeComte in the Sea of Japan, he could still go and visit Frannie Meyers at the Palme, if Frannie was alive. But he wouldn’t create a black hole for Sweets, saddle him with an absentee Commish.
He sat with the giant. He wrote a letter of resignation, handed it to Sweets. “I’m gonna run. I could announce this minute, but I’d rather not. I can’t afford the publicity right now. Give me five days. If I’m not back, go with the letter. You don’t have to cover my ass. I can’t promise what Rebecca will do. But it won’t matter. If I win, you’ll be my Commish.”
“It’s Margaret Tolstoy again, isn’t it, Isaac? Why are you involved? She’s just another caper.”
“I gotta go.”
“And what if I put my letter of resignation on top of yours?”
“Ah, you wouldn’t do that. The whole Department would land in a shitstorm.”
The giant hugged Isaac. “Be careful, boss … Palermo is another planet.”
Isaac grabbed the two Giuseppinas, hid them in the back of his car, and went up to Gracie Mansion with Barbarossa.
“I got me a passport,” Barbarossa said.
“What the hell for?”
“Palermo.”
“Forget about it. I can’t protect you, Joey. I’m resigning in a couple of days. And you’ll be a renegade cop attached to a renegade ex-Commish.”
“That’s my funeral. We’re the Twins.”
“Wait in the car,” Isaac said, and walked into the mansion. Mother Courage made him a cup of tea. “Thank you, Dove.” Was she angling to remain chief of staff during the Sidel administration? He didn’t feel like the City’s future king. He was only one more man inside a labyrinth.
The mayor was asleep in her rocking chair. Mario was in some far corner of the house, avoiding him. Isaac climbed upstairs to Montezuma’s bedroom. Montezuma was curled up on a window seat, watching the water. He sat in his slippers and faded corduroys, like a warlord at the end of the world.
“Cavaliere, I need your advice.”
Montezuma turned to look at Isaac. He’d been crying.
“Sorry,” Isaac said. “I didn’t mean to … it’s hard to live in exile.”
“On the contrary. I love it, signore. I have a river all my own. I’m treated like royalty. I was remembering my childhood …”
“At the Palme Hotel.”
“Yeah, at the Palme … and before. How can I help you?”
“Margaret’s disappeared.”
“I’m not surprised,” Montezuma said. “She’s looking for Odessa.”
“Come on, cavaliere. Don’t play innocent. She’s in Palermo. Why did she run away from LeComte? I thought she was a career girl … you spent more time with her than I did. Tell me.”
“She was tired of wearing wigs, of not remembering who she was at night, of being the wet nurse of criminals.”
“Cavaliere, she could have come to me.”
“Perhaps,” Montezuma said. “But you’re also a criminal, if you’ll allow me to say so.”
“Cavaliere, you don’t have to be polite. I am a criminal. I agree. But Margaret should have gone to Paris. She speaks French. She lived in Paris with Antonescu.”
“Palermo was where she had her honeymoon … with me. I’m joking, signore. She couldn’t escape LeComte in Paris, even with all her wigs. But in Palermo anything is possible.”
“Is she with Robert? Would Robert take her in?”
“Anything is possible.”
“Then give me a fucking opinion.”
“She’s with Robert,” Montezuma said. “If Robert is in Palermo.”
“And how can I get her back?”
“You can’t,” Montezuma said. “But you could bring her flowers, signore. Margaret loves white roses, with long stems. And I’d bring a babysitter with the flowers.”
“What babysitter would you recommend?”
The cavaliere smiled. “Who else but Montezuma’s Man?”
“I thought so,” Isaac said. “Montezuma’s Man.”
Part Seven
33
She lived at a broken palace near the harbor, on a vicolo without a name. It was a blind alley with a little crumbling bridge that connected Margaret’s palazzo to a palazzo across the street. The old woman who attended Margaret called her “dottoressa,” but Margaret had no degrees. She’d gone to junior high with the gypsy, Sidel, and that’s where her education ended … until her kindergarten classes with the KGB. She’d had only one address: Little Angel Street in Odessa, where she’d starved with Uncle Ferdinand and eaten the flesh of little boys from the lunatic asylum. The dottoressa was a cannibal and a whore and a nurse for the FBI. She’d lost her patient, Sal Rubino. The maestro, young Robert, had murdered Sal, and Margaret was in mourning. But she couldn’t recall the name or number of the street where she’d lived with Sal. It was one more vicolo in a life of vicolos.
—Dottoressa.
The old witch, Giovanna, was calling to her from below. Margaret found her little basket with its long piece of rope and let it out the window. She could tell when Giovanna started to tug. Margaret would count to thirty and draw up the rope, length by length. And she’d have her paradiso of wine and cheese and roasted red peppers in a sea of olive oil. It was all part of the same pretense that she was a prigioniera at the palace, that she belonged to Robert, like some Arabian horse or wife, and not to the eyes of Palermo. The door wasn’t locked. She could wander the streets day and night, and she often did. The darkness reminded her of that other darkness, the catacombs under Odessa, where the partisans and pirates had their own mirrored world, with Little Angel Street and Magda Antonescu.
Robert had “captured” her the day she arrived. His workshop was in the palazzo across the bridge. He would stage puppet shows for the cavalieri, those dons with tiny shotguns that seemed to fit the dimensions of their bodies. No woman was invited to the puppet shows, except for Margaret, the maestro’s Roumanian-American mistress, horse, and wife. She was “una matta,” touched in the head, and the cavalieri could ignore her without offending Robert.
She would steal the little black cigars from their mouths, and the cavalieri refused to notice. They were the only ones who didn’t call her “dottoressa.” She was the devil lady who’d entangled Robert, caught him in the trap of his own affections, and Margaret had to laugh, because it might have been true. She’d wanted a vacation in Palermo, a long rest, a honeymoon of her own, and Robert had imposed himself upon her bachelor honeymoon.
But he didn’t destroy the privacy of her palace. He would wait for Margaret to cross over that crumbling bridge to his little museum of dolls. And if the two of them made love, it was in a comradely way, like brothers or sisters with a homicidal bent. Whatever contact they had was enough.
Mostly, Margaret was by herself on that nameless vicolo, where her past would also impose itself, and she would suck at the dark cigarettes and dream of the days when there was no Margaret Tolstoy, and she was Magda Antonescu, a little Nazi queen in a place called Paris …
Magda had a rocking horse and a dollhouse that reached the chandeliers. Her windows faced the cimetière, with its own dollhouses for the dead, and when she stood out on the balcony, she often felt that the dollhouses belonged to her. She was twelve years old. She slept in Uncle Ferdinand’s bed, with little chocolate boys under her pillow. The chocolates came wrapped in silver and were called “nigger babies.” She would eat them in the middle of the night, after Uncle Ferdinand made love to her and fell asleep in his silk pajamas. He would touch her gently and ride on h
er, blowing air out of his cheeks, and then he would curl up like a nigger baby on his side of the bed.
Magda had no complaints. She was a married lady, but she wasn’t allowed to wear a wedding ring. Uncle Ferdinand advertised her as his niece. He was the finance minister of Russian Roumania, a new country on the Black Sea. The country was called Transnistria, but it wouldn’t be ready for another month. Meanwhile they lived on the boulevard Edgar Quinet.
It was January 1942. Magda counted her nigger babies while Paris starved. The admiral who lived upstairs had turnips for breakfast, turnips for lunch. He’d lost his entire fleet. He was considered quite crazy because he wore a yellow star over his heart. French admirals weren’t supposed to wear a yellow star. The police arrested him, but the little führers at the Service Juif didn’t know what to do with Admiral Antoine Gabriel. A tailor would arrive to tear off the yellow star, and the police would send him home.
Once, while she was on her rocking horse, Magda saw the admiral wandering in the cimetière. He stooped and began to scrub the stone of a particular dollhouse. Magda ran downstairs in her winter coat, crossed the boulevard Edgar Quinet, and entered the cimetière, which had its own boulevards, like a separate city inside the walls of Paris. She stopped in front of the admiral, who was still scrubbing the dollhouse.
“Monsieur I’Amiral?”
He turned around. His eyes were red. He was wearing another yellow star.
“Ma petite reine nazie.”
“Is your wife resting inside the little house?”
“Yes. Now go away and let me have some peace. It’s a cemetery, child. Not a Nazi brothel.”
Magda ran out of the cimetière. She returned to her rocking horse and cried.
Uncle Ferdinand brought her to a big hotel on the boulevard Raspail. The Germans were having a soirée at Gestapo Headquarters. Magda wore a red dress with a sash around her shoulder. Uncle had a dark cloak and all the medals of a Reichskommissar, but he was the kommissar of a country that didn’t exist. She’d met Ferdinand when she was nine. He’d been her ballet master in Bucharest. He’d pulled her out of an orphanage and she started to live with him when she was ten and a half. He’d woo her with nigger babies. She didn’t understand all the fuss and fury of sleeping with a man. Every night, a little before eleven, she grew into a rocking horse.
Montezuma's Man (The Isaac Sidel Novels) Page 20
