It wasn’t much of a mystery. Fran had the missing machine pistol under his poncho.
Fran stared at the dead captain floating in the water.
“Never liked him,” he said.
35
Isaac had a school principal on his side. Frannie Meyers. He and Barbarossa were Fran’s ghost children, lost boys in Palermo. The Pink Commish bought white roses for Margaret Tolstoy, but how could he deliver them? Fran struggled to arrange a meet with the young maestro. “Tell him,” Isaac said, “tell him I have two of his dolls.”
Isaac kept the Giuseppinas in his bedroom at the Palme. Fran moved in with Isaac and Barbarossa. He had to make sporadic dashes into young Robert’s neighborhood, near the Via Pappagallo. He couldn’t stay long, or he’d lose his life to the little kings and their band of Brits, those Malta men, like Captain Beard. The Brits were all over the fucking place. They’d already killed journalists and mayors and policemen in the back halls of the Palme Hotel.
The Palermitans were frightened to death of these ex-British agents, who could seize a restaurant or a cinema at will, and then vanish into some vicolo. The police were powerless against the Brits, who had the little kings behind them. Fran stopped foraging. And Isaac grew sick of eating endless meals at the Palme, surrounded by ancient widows, the only ones who could afford the full pensione besides Isaac himself. He was fond of a Sicilian fruit salad called “macedonia.” Isaac wondered if Alexander the Great, king of Macedon, had brought the first fruit salad to Sicily.
“It’s no use,” he said, after eating his fifth macedonia with Joe and Fran. “I’ll have to get to Robert on my own.”
“Boss, it’s murder out there.”
“I can’t wait. Margaret’s not coming. And that little prick Robert won’t meet with us.”
He went upstairs to get the dolls. Joe and Fran stood behind him. “We’ll back you up,” Fran said. “You’ll never get near Robert. The Brits will pick you clean. They’ll grab the dolls, your shoes, your life …”
“I’ll have to risk it.”
He walked down from the Via Roma, crossed the Vittorio Emanuele to the Via Pappagallo and that piazza with its forest of banyan trees, where he’d met Robert once before. He was carrying the two Giuseppinas in his arms. He didn’t advertise himself. He stood there in that forest. He couldn’t tell much about the Brits. Little gangs gathered around Isaac, but no one menaced him. And then he saw Robert within a maze of roots, wearing a crimson shirt.
“I played here when I was a boy,” Robert said, without acknowledging Isaac or the Giuseppinas.
“Boy? What boy?” Isaac said. “You were born a puppeteer.”
“You’re confusing me with my knife,” Robert said. But he wouldn’t take the dolls. Isaac had to stand there with those two curious children in his arms, three feet high. His head seemed lost among their limbs.
“I’ve been guarding them for you, maestro. Your dolls.”
“I don’t want them, Mr. Isaac. They were gifts to Mario Klein and the mayor of New York. You’ll return them … with my compliments.”
“They were carriers,” Isaac said, “boats for la morte bianca. You can’t deny it. I was at your heroin farm on the Isola delle Fémmine. I found Fran. He was all strung out. Barbarossa had to hold him like a baby.”
“But he’s alive, Mr. Isaac. And that’s an accomplishment. You can have him. I’m not interested in Fran. But the dottoressa stays with me.”
“I’m going to marry that girl.”
“She’s not a girl, Mr. Isaac. She’s our local goddess. And the best neighbor I ever had. I wouldn’t know what to do without the dottoressa. There’s only a small bridge between us. That comforts me. I work on my marionettes and think of her.”
“Then you’ll have to find another goddess.”
“I could have had you slaughtered in your bed at the Palme, but I didn’t. I admire babbas, policemen with romantic ideas.”
“You’re mistaken. I’m not a babba. I’m an assassino, just like you.”
“The people you kill don’t stay dead.”
“It’s very dashing of you, Robert, to drown a crippled man in a tub of water. I was getting fond of Sal. He was crazy about your dolls. You shouldn’t have killed him … Robert, you can have all the cavalieri in the world, and all the men from Malta. It won’t save you. Because I’m going to wrap your fucking neck around a tree.”
The maestro started to cackle in his crimson shirt. He took out his knife and slashed one of the Giuseppinas across her eye. Isaac was horrified.
The cackling stopped, and Robert seemed to dissolve inside his shirt. He was the spiky-haired apprentice again.
Isaac turned around. Jerry DiAngelis was behind him, with the melamed. They had their own escort, five Brits, hurly-burly men with speckled beards. Isaac felt a bleakness in his heart.
“You made up with Jerry, didn’t you, Robert?”
“He returned all the dolls,” Robert said. “He hates LeComte. I hate LeComte. That’s almost like a marriage.”
“You’re going for museum money now. That’s the catch. Isn’t it, Peppinninu?”
“Mr. Isaac, I’m only a carpenter,” Robert said.
“And the latest in a fucking line of bandits and pricks.”
“Robert,” Jerry said, “don’t listen to him. He likes to rave. Give him back the bimbo, Margaret Tolstoy.”
“He’s a babba policeman,” Robert said. “What the hell does he mean to you?”
“I can’t afford to have him killed.”
“Yeah,” Robert said. “You want a mayor in your Family.”
“It’s not like that,” Jerry said. “Raoul is fond of him, and so is the melamed. But it’s not like that. We’ll all be hounded. The babba is running for office.”
“Then I want some compensation.”
“You can talk dollars,” the melamed said. “We’re not stingy people.”
“Rabbi,” Robert said. “Keep your dollars. I want flesh. The policeman has to give me Barbarossa. He’ll be my monkey. And when I tire of him, I’ll cut his throat.”
“That’s fine with me,” Jerry said. “You can have Barbarossa.”
Isaac had to hug the dolls to his chest, or he would have attacked the three of them, and all five Brits.
“Not in your lifetime,” he said. “Barbarossa isn’t for sale.”
“Come on,” Jerry said. “It’s like baseball. You’re shaking up your team a little … we have to give Robert something, for Christ’s sake. That’s how things are done on this island. Robert will look bad. How can he face the little kings? He has to have a monkey.”
“Then I’ll wear the leash.”
“Who would believe it?” Jerry said. “You’ll be mayor in six months, our next king.”
“Niènte,” Isaac said. “You get nothing. You and the cavalieri are kissing cousins … ah, I should have figured. The melamed would never have made a deal with LeComte. You were just tickling him. That breakdown in the heroin traffic didn’t cost you a cent. It was a lullaby to put LeComte to sleep. The dolls were only a diversion.”
“Not a diversion. Call it a sideshow. We had a lot invested in the dolls. LeComte never knew.”
“And while Margaret was gone, you encouraged Robert to go after Sal.”
“Jesus,” Jerry said, “Robert tried to kill me too!”
“But he didn’t get very far, right, Iz?”
“We saw our chance,” the melamed said, “and we took it. It’s called creative management.”
“No, Iz. It’s murder à la mode. And when the Black Stocking Twins arrived, you got scared. You thought Margaret and Joe and me might corrupt young Robert. So Jerry brings you along to make a good impression on the cavalieri, like pious puppets.”
“Babba,” Jerry said. “I save your ass, and you call me a puppet?… Dad, let’s leave him here. You travel four thousand miles after you had a stroke, and he spits in our face.”
“Yeah,” Isaac said. “It’s just like Rowena’s
Restaurant … a little acting class.”
He dropped the Giuseppinas at Robert’s feet, stepped outside that little wall of bearded Brits, and removed himself from Robert’s playground of banyan trees.
Margaret was at the Palme when Isaac returned, wearing her red wig. She had bruises on her forehead, and her face was sallow.
“I’ll kill Robert and his Malta men.”
“It’s nothing,” Margaret said. “I had an argument with a witch … stop crying or I’ll run away.”
“I’m not crying. I had flowers for you. And they’re all dead.”
“Why did you drag Joey along?”
“He’s my twin … ah, Montezuma told me to bring him.”
“My poor dumb darling, it was Montezuma’s way of getting Joey killed.”
“Nobody dies,” Isaac said. “Not while I’m in Palermo.”
But he was shivering in his bones. He didn’t want another Blue Eyes. Marilyn would scold him into eternity. And Isaac would be a lone rider with a useless stocking mask.
He had his own honeymoon with Margaret for half an hour. He kissed her bruises, and then they all had to catch a plane. Margaret never returned to her palace. She sat beside the window while Barbarossa slept near Frannie Meyers, and her own dumb darling held her hand. She thought of Little Angel Street and the admiral’s turnips and the big dollhouses in the cimetière, and she wondered what the hell it meant to be a child. The big bear wanted to marry her, but how could Dracula’s Daughter become a mayor’s wife?
“I’ll go to LeComte,” Isaac said. “I’ll buy you back from the Bureau. They’ll never deport you, Anastasia. I’m king of the Democrats. That fuck will have to listen.”
“Shhh,” Margaret said, closing his mouth with a kiss in front of all the stewards and stewardesses. Margaret had a vegetarian meal. She couldn’t bear the odor of meat after her days and nights as a cannibal in Odessa.
“You’ll live with me … right away.”
“Shhh,” she said. But she did start to dream of herself as the mistress of a mansion, La Signora Sidel. She carried that picture off the plane with her. But it didn’t last beyond the passport control. She had to leave Isaac and Barbarossa and Fran and get on a separate line. She was an alien who didn’t even have a green card. LeComte wouldn’t allow her one. She had a Roumanian passport, invented by the FBI. Her status in America would always be ambiguous.
There was a familiar face behind the control booth. It belonged to LeComte’s girl Friday, Special Agent Monica Bradstreet on loan from Atlanta. LeComte was sleeping with her, as he slept with all his girl Fridays. Monica was some kind of ninja who could have knocked Margaret on her ass.
“Frederics waiting,” she said.
And Margaret had to accompany Monica Bradstreet across a labyrinth of aisles and into a U.S. Customs interrogation room. She didn’t even have the dignity of being alone with LeComte. Monica stood beside him with a notebook in her hand. LeComte was wearing a powder-blue shirt that Margaret had given him for one of his phony birthdays. LeComte loved to feed on his own image of a mystery man. He was constantly changing addresses and birthdays, but he couldn’t crawl out from under the color blue.
“What happened to your face?”
“It’s the Sicilian sky,” she said. “Bad for the complexion.”
“Margaret, you had your fun … now it’s over.”
“You squealed to Isaac, didn’t you? You told him where I was, sent him on a sucker’s bet. He was your carrier pigeon.”
“He’s the Pink Commish. He brought you back to civilization.”
“I liked Palermo,” she said. “I had my own palace.”
“You walked out on Sal. He couldn’t survive without his nurse … Margaret, you got him killed.”
She would have struck LeComte, but she couldn’t fight the little boy blue and his ninja.
“Frederic,” she said, “Sal would be alive if you wanted him alive. You got sick of him. He was one more broken-down jeweler …”
But she did miss that man in the wheelchair. He’d become part of Margaret’s own skin. “If you hold me too long, Isaac will put on his mask and start ripping up the airport with Barbarossa.”
“He can have the golden goose,” LeComte said, while his ninja smirked into her notebook. “But you’re mine, Margaret. Remember that … tell me about the little master.”
“Robert? He doesn’t whimper in the middle of his orgasms, like Frederic LeComte … are you taking that down, Monica dear?”
“I’m laughing my heart out,” LeComte said. “You’re a stateless little bitch. The Roumanians won’t even recognize you as one of their nationals. You can’t afford to be a badass. Now what about Robert? He’s been silent all of a sudden.”
“He’s meditating. He likes to lick blood out of old pieces of wood.”
“Robert’s much more clever than that. He’s gone into partnership with himself … what are his trade routes?”
“I didn’t ask Robert about his routes. I was his concubine, Arab style. We never spoke. Monica’s younger than I am, and she doesn’t have varicose veins. Have Robert fall in love with her … meanwhile, Frederic, get fucked.”
She kissed LeComte on the forehead, walked out, got past the Customs declaration booth, and found her little trio of men.
“Baby,” Isaac said, “what took you so long?”
36
There was a panic among the Party bosses. The Pink Commish wasn’t even a registered Democrat. Isaac had to scribble his name in front of a little old lady at the Board of Elections. He thought of Sweets. Rebecca wouldn’t move from her rocking chair, wouldn’t sanctify him as her PC.
For the third time in two years, Sweets was Acting Commish. He moved back into Isaac’s office and summoned Barbarossa to the commissioners’ floor. Joe didn’t get along with the black giant. Sweets would probably take his gold shield away and banish him to Sherwood Forest.
“You’ll guard the boss,” Sweets said. “I’m assigning you to Sidel. He was already wounded once … a hospital case. I don’t want it to happen again.”
Police inspectors scurried out of Barbarossa’s way. He was marked by Sidel. He was the chauffeur and confidant and lawless twin of the Democrats’ new dark knight, their vigilante cop, the Pink Commish who was running for mayor.
Isaac couldn’t go anywhere without a band of photographers. The constant, crazy traffic exhausted Barbarossa. He had to shield the boss, protect him from male and female admirers, the lovelorn, the wounded, the misfits who tried to grab a piece of Isaac. Suddenly the boss was famous. It had nothing to do with the Democratic machine or the campaign itself. There was no campaign. The dark knight had to be out looking for the holy ghosts of Manhattan and the Bronx, the witches of Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island. He searched the sewers and the subways for some strange grail.
And on one of these quests, with people all around him, Isaac whispered in Joe’s ear. “We have to whack Montezuma, but I’m not sure how. We could stick him in Rebecca’s basement, but he’d start to stink … ah, he’s only a rat. Let him stay where he is.”
Frannie Meyers would have been another guest at Gracie Mansion, but he couldn’t seem to get along without Poe Park. Barbarossa had to move him back to Valentine Avenue. He had a whole castle to himself, Crazy Corners, with the broken concrete and his king’s chair. The castle was overrun with rats. Barbarossa had to hurl chunks of debris at them.
“Fran, you don’t have to stay. I could find you a boarding-house.”
“I live here,” Fran said. “It’s my home.”
They’d been enemies half their lives, they’d scarred each other, planned each other’s deaths, but their battles had given them a language and a history, and they were almost bedfellows now, intimates of their very own war.
Barbarossa went from Poe Park to Palisade Avenue and his sister Roz, who had her old room at Macabee’s. Her wrists had healed. Her hair was whiter at the roots. Joe couldn’t forget that absolute blondness she’d on
ce had.
“I have my own beautician,” Roz said. “Mrs. Daggers. She came up from Indian Road to do my hair.”
Barbarossa saw the penciled lines under his sister’s eyes. She looked like an aristocratic Mama-san in the French Quarter of Saigon, the widow of some plantation owner who’d fallen on hard times. No matter how long he lived, he couldn’t graduate from Nam: the drug-dealing marine with his own pingpong table.
He was feeling guilty under Roz’s gaze. He hadn’t gone to Indian Road since he returned from Sicily. He loved Marilyn the Wild, but he was frightened of the wounds she could open in him, that fucking tenderness. He’d have to kill Isaac to keep her.
“She loves you, Joe. Don’t come here again until you see her.”
But there were complications now. He was shadowing Margaret Tolstoy. She wouldn’t settle in with the boss on Rivington Street. She’d disappear for days, and the boss would mope.
“Doesn’t leave a message … I’m telling you, Joey. She has the hots for another man.”
There was only LeComte. The little boy blue had his claws in Margaret. Joe tracked her to one of LeComte’s cribs, and while he stood in the hall and waited for her to come out, a woman approached with slightly greenish hair. It was Monica Bradstreet. She smiled at Barbarossa and then her feet were in his face, and he was lying on the floor. Montezuma’s Man. He hadn’t even blocked her kicks with his white glove. He didn’t have a white glove. Monica must have pulled it off his hand and he had to stare at his own raw fingers and the mottled skin that was the color of a turkey’s neck.
He blinked and clutched the wall. Margaret was standing over him. She’d found his white glove. She had to help him squeeze his raw fingers into the fingers of the glove. He scratched the wall with his gloved hand and rose up until he landed in Margaret’s arms.
“You shouldn’t have tangled with Monica Bradstreet. She’s a ninja.”
“Next time I’ll know,” he said.
Montezuma's Man (The Isaac Sidel Novels) Page 22
