Montezuma's Man (The Isaac Sidel Novels)

by Jerome Charyn

  “And why are you following me?”

  “The boss is cracking up. He won’t drink his jello. He can’t remember any of his speeches. He’ll run against himself and lose … the blue boy is blackmailing you, isn’t he?”

  They both sat down on the bottom stair of LeComte’s apartment house.

  “Frederic has all my files from the KGB. He can leak a couple of pages and ruin Isaac. He and Monica are dreaming up headlines. ‘The Spy without a Country and the Pink Commish.’ I have to rat out Robert a little.”

  Barbarossa slept at Schiller’s whenever he could. But he had to keep the same hours as Frederic LeComte. He discovered LeComte’s favorite restaurant, a brasserie in SoHo called the New Moon, where LeComte liked to dine with Monica Brad-street.

  Barbarossa would look through the window and see Marilyn’s face in the glass. He’d rub his eyes until Marilyn went away. He couldn’t indulge himself on ghostly girlfriends. He had to clock the voyage of LeComte’s dinners, from the first glass of red wine through the appetizer and the main course to the demitasse and dessert and the last little bowl of brandy. He grew feverish memorizing LeComte’s meals. And after he clocked the cultural commissar three times, he broke into the New Moon just before brandy, when LeComte’s eyes began to glaze and Monicas green hair dropped twenty degrees. Barbarossa arrived at the table and dug his Glock into the commissar’s left ear. The restaurant grew alert. LeComte woke out of his delicious half sleep.

  “You’re crazy to come here, Joe.”

  “Nah,” Barbarossa said. “I have to report to you, Frederic. I’m your snitch.”

  “You’re not in our books,” LeComte said. “You’re a penny-ante dealer who pretends to be a cop.”

  “But you shouldn’t have pushed me into killing a man who was wearing one of your magic vests.”

  “Montezuma?” LeComte said. “That’s water under the bridge. Don’t make a fool of yourself, Joe. We’re in a public place.”

  “It’s perfect. Me, you, and the whore.”

  “Don’t talk like that about Agent Bradstreet.”

  “Frederic, he’s bluffing,” Monica said, her green hair still at an angle. “I could blow him away.”

  “I’d love it,” Barbarossa said. “Try me.”

  “No,” LeComte said, seeing that mad steel in Barbarossa’s blue eyes. “No … he’s a lunatic. Vietnam Joe.”

  Barbarossa caught the bartender crouching over a telephone.

  “Get the fuck away from that phone,” he said, and with his free hand he took out his gold shield. “Don’t be scared,” he shouted at the restaurant. “I’m a police officer having a chat with the FBI.”

  Monica started to mumble. “He is a lunatic.”

  “I haven’t recovered from my jet lag,” Barbarossa said. “I have itchy fingers.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Your life, Frederic. Only your life.”

  “A comedian,” LeComte said, with a twitch between his eyes while Monica went for her gun. Barbarossa struck her temple with the flat of his hand. Her eyes wandered slowly and she fell off the chair and lay in her own darkness.

  “I don’t like ninjas,” Barbarossa said.

  “You’ll suffer,” LeComte said. “You’ll suffer, I swear.”

  “Frederic, give me one reason why I shouldn’t whack you.”

  “I’m with Justice,” LeComte said. “I …”

  “You’re a rat handler … you don’t do drugs, but you live off the profits of your dealers. Frederic, count to three.”

  “I won’t,” LeComte said.

  “Count to three.”

  LeComte’s nose started to leak.

  “Frederic, I’m your personal demon. Montezuma’s Man. I’ll crawl into bed with you. I’ll put out your lights. Wherever you go, I’ll be there with my Glock … are you gonna do your demon one small favor?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes.”

  “You’ll let go of Margaret, you’ll give her up.”

  “Yes.”

  “And if you lie, Frederic, I’ll be there every fucking day of the week. You’ll have blood shooting out of your ears.”

  Barbarossa walked out of the Half Moon while the customers sat like stone, their eyes fixed on Barbarossa’s disappearing back. His hand trembled under the white glove. He rode uptown to Schiller’s, sat behind his pingpong table, like Chief Joseph in his tent, another narrowed warrior. His pager began to sing. He tossed it into Schiller’s back room. He sat.

  Two figures floated toward him. The boss and a blondie with curls in her hair, Marilyn the Wild. Barbarossa felt bumps all over his body, like a rash of love.

  “Joey, where you been?” Isaac asked.

  He muttered a single word. Marilyn.

  37

  Sidel was father of the bride. He could have hired a hall, but Her Honor would have felt slighted. She’d risen out of her rocking chair for the prospect of a wedding in the Green Room at Gracie Mansion. She had all the powers of a magistrate, a justice of the peace. Cardinal Jim couldn’t marry the bride and groom. Marilyn had a Catholic mom, the Countess Kathleen, but the girl was a bit of an atheist. Jim would only come as a guest. Rebecca had to preside over the ceremony. Her staff had prepared a lavender gown for her. She’d begun to exercise in the attic. The Party chiefs were a little worried about this new robustness. She’d lost her gray complexion. She might enter the primaries and collect all the sympathy of an abandoned mayor. They were careful around Rebecca Karp. She’d become a person, not a shadow on a porch.

  “Your Honor,” said Saturnino Gomez, Manhattan Party boss. “We’ll all bow to your wishes. Isaac can still step aside.”

  “You cocksuckers,” she said, “You buried me months ago. Sidel is my candidate.”

  And the chiefs suddenly had someone to fear: their own unelectable mayor. She seemed much more independent of Mario. She would caucus privately with Sidel. An hour before the wedding, they were seen together, Sidel and Becky Karp. “They’re vipers,” she said. “Those Party people.”

  “Means nothing,” Isaac said. “I’ll have you at Gracie as a permanent guest.”

  But he was troubled. Sweets had arrived with Barbarossa’s fucking nemesis, Wig, who couldn’t stop grinning. Isaac had to pull Sweets into a corner.

  “I didn’t invite Wig to my daughter’s wedding. What’s he doing here? I suspended him.”

  “I put Wig back on the payroll,” Sweets said. “He’s a terrific cop.”

  “And a member of the Purple Gang.”

  “That’s a myth,” Sweets said. “I haven’t seen one Purple in Harlem, and neither have you.”

  “But I didn’t invite him,” Isaac had to say again.

  “He’s my driver,” Sweets said. “We can both disappear if you like.”

  “Come on,” Isaac said. “You’re the Commish.”

  “Acting Commish.”

  But Isaac was shoved into a sea of guests. He was the patriarch, the king. Reporters had crashed the ceremony. They curled up to Isaac, who had to bang at them with his elbows. He was mournful on Marilyn’s wedding day. Margaret had fled Isaac’s apartment without a note. She hadn’t left the simplest sign of herself, not a single bracelet. And he was spooked by the apparition of Barbarossa’s death. He could imagine Joe lying in a box, like Blue Eyes … and Sweets had to bring Wig to the wedding party.

  Isaac delivered club sodas to his guests. The cardinal nudged him from underneath his cape.

  “You’re no politician, boyo. I’ll eat you alive.”

  Jim’s Manhattan Knights had destroyed the Delancey Giants, and the cardinal reigned in his powerhouse, St. Patrick’s Cathedral. He gathered strength year after year. No mayor could compete with a cardinal’s flock.

  “Sonny, I’ll give you my list.”

  “What list?” Isaac asked, like a boy inside the confessional.

  “Of Catholics in your administration.”

  “Jim, I’m not going to appoint by race or religion.”

&nb
sp; “Jaysus,” Jim said. “I won’t have to eat you up. You’ll fall like Humpty Dumpty. Are you deaf, dumb, and blind? New York is race and religion. I won’t have an antichrist at Gracie Mansion.”

  “You’re bullying me, Jim.”

  “Indeed. And you’ll learn to live with it … but she’s a lovely girl, that daughter of yours. Even if she was raised by the antichrist.”

  “I didn’t raise her,” Isaac said. “She raised herself.”

  But the cardinal had already gone off to politick with some clan. Isaac discovered two teenaged boys. They were wearing ragged suits that could have come out of a barrel on the Lower East Side. God, they were his very own nephews. What were their names? Michael … Michael and Davey. He was growing sly as a candidate. He fed them ham and cheese and the enormous hill of a rye bread. He’d forgotten all about their mom, Selma Sidel, who’d dragged Isaac’s own little brother Leo through alimony court and sat him down in civil jail.

  The king was a very distant uncle. He should have been kinder to Michael and Davey, more attentive. But he was falling into the land of amnesia. It wasn’t a good omen. The town would have a king who’d disremember his own deputies the minute after he appointed them.

  The chatelaine, Aurora Dove, flirted with Isaac. He growled at her. “Dove, you don’t have to perform … I’m not gonna fire you.”

  He had an awful premonition that Barbarossa wouldn’t survive his own wedding. Isaac would have to single out every fucking character with a gun. But the house was full of policemen. He couldn’t frisk them all. His shoulders began to shake. He’d start to blubber soon. The king was a crybaby.

  He bumped into Leo Sidel.

  “Isaac, what’s wrong?”

  “Ah, Leo. I’m thinking about short pants.”

  “Whose?’ Leo asked. “Yours or mine?”

  “I didn’t take care of you, Leo. I turned you into a hood.”

  “Isaac, control yourself. You’ll embarrass your own daughter … I wasn’t a hood. Did I hurt anyone? I hopped across a line of policemen with ration stamps in my pocket.”

  “Stolen stamps,” Isaac had to say, defending his own crimes.

  “Isaac, it was two or three wars ago. Think about something else.”

  But Isaac couldn’t. And then a bald woman arrived at the wedding party. No, she wasn’t bald. She had gray hair cropped close to her skull. It was Margaret Tolstoy without the camouflage of a wig. The whole congregation of guests turned to look. There was a mosaic of silence in the Green Room. She had the startling beauty of a woman who’d just stepped out of her own crystalline world.

  And now Leo was blubbering. “Anastasia,” he said. He’d been in love with the schoolgirl all his life. Isaac shouldn’t have mentioned short pants. Hadn’t he followed Anastasia home from school, adored her furtively while Isaac squeezed her hand? Whatever women he’d had were only reflections of Anastasia, pale counterparts. He’d go to sleep with images of Anastasia, yet he hadn’t pronounced her name in forty years. It wasn’t fair. Her absence had defined Leo Sidel.

  “Anastasia, do you remember me?”

  “Little Leo,” she said. “Mr. Short Pants.”

  “The same. I never quite outgrew my knickers.”

  “You’re monopolizing her,” Isaac said, leading Anastasia away from little Leo. He wanted to stop the party, chase out all the guests.

  “I won’t move into this mansion without you … I’ll live in the streets.”

  “The voters will love their vagabond king.”

  “I’m not a king,” he said.

  She kissed him, and Isaac was quiet. A door opened. Barbarossa, Marilyn, and Roz emerged from a conference room with that justice of the peace, Rebecca Karp. The bride wore earthly colors, red and brown. She wouldn’t wear white at her tenth wedding. Marilyn had spent the morning doing Roz’s hair. Roz had never seen her brother get married.

  Larry Quinn, chief of the mayor’s detail, whispered in Isaac’s ear, and Isaac had to leave the wedding party. He climbed up the stairs to Montezuma’s bedroom, knocked on the door, and announced himself. Two members of the detail let him in. The Sicilian Aztec was furious. He was sitting in his pajamas, like a rat under house arrest.

  “I’m not supposed to be a prisoner, Signore Sidel.”

  “I can’t invite you to my daughter’s wedding. That would be obscene. You’ve been trying to get Barbarosaa killed. And don’t bother calling LeComte. All of the mayor’s lines are bugged. Cavaliere, you have no future outside this room.”

  And Isaac strode downstairs to the wedding. He panicked. Anastasia was gone. He looked all over for that closely cropped head of gray hair. His fucking heart sank. But her skull emerged from a trinity of people. She was standing with Marilyn and Joe and Joe’s suicidal sister. Roz.

  A ghost in pajamas whisked around him with its own brute force. Montezuma had gotten past his guards. He was clutching a black object. God, Isaac groaned in his confusion and screamed at Joe. “Blue Eyes, watch out.”

  And he jumped on top of Montezuma, wrestled with him on the mayor’s carpeted floor. The mansion grew into a forest of guns. Wig and Sweets and Margaret Tolstoy and Barbarossa and Larry Quinn were aiming their Glocks at Montezuma’s eyes. The cardinal was clutching a lamp.

  “Mamma,” Montezuma said, “I just wanted to give something to the bride.”

  He’d carved a little wooden dog for Marilyn, painted it with black shoe polish. Now Isaac had to let that son of a bitch into the party. Montezuma was one more wedding guest.

  But the wedding had stalled until Rebecca Karp strolled across the Green Room in her lavender gown, a mayor without her rocking chair, and glowered at the Glocks. It was her mansion. “Put the guns away … you cocksuckers, I have a girl to marry,” she said to the cardinal and all the other guests.

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Isaac Sidel Novels

  Part One

  1.

  “Sweets.”

  He was in a field full of ice. But the ice couldn’t hold him. His shoes sank under the freezing skin. He didn’t drown. He’d created a splinter in the ice, a crack that widened with the bulk of him. He was too big. He’d always been that way.

  “Sweets.”

  He was coming out of a dream. He was in the Hollows, a resort near Morristown, New Jersey, where his daddy had owned a summer and winter palace. It was the most exclusive resort in America. It catered only to black millionaires. And the field of ice had been Sweets’ territory when he was a child. It was also heroic grounds. George Washington hid his army in the Hollows during the winter of 1779-80 and outfoxed the British from the same field of ice.

  “Sweets.”

  He opened one eye. Somebody was sitting on his desk, wearing a widebrimmed hat. It was his own point man, Albert Wiggens, who loved to sneak up on him, arrive unannounced. Wig was his most trusted aide, a brutal policeman and member of the Purple Gang, a mythical bunch of Harlem desperadoes. Wig was like some outrider who could cross invisible boundaries and create his own sense of inner space, where no police commissioner, black or white, could ever travel. Carlton Montgomery III, called Sweets, had been a star of the Columbia College baseball and basketball teams. But a knee injury had kept him out of professional sports. He didn’t agonize over any missed career. He sat behind his desk, with a begonia he’d inherited from Isaac Sidel, the previous Commish, and dreamt about the Hollows until Albert Wiggens woke him up.

  “Wig, you’re sitting on an heirloom. This was Teddy Roosevelt’s desk.”

  “A lot of white trash,” Wig said.

  “But it’s my desk now. And remove your butt.”

  “Oh, I will, Mr. Sweets. I have news for you. I found the Pink Commish.”

  Sidel would move into Gracie Mansion in another month. He was the reluctant king of New York. And the king had obliged the current mayor, Ms. Rebecca Karp, to have Sweets sworn in as the first black PC. Sweets didn’t care about racial gambits, but everybody else did. He had to speak at churches and
synagogues and college departments of criminology. He wouldn’t accept a personal fee. He donated whatever he got to Cardinal O’Bannon’s AIDS hospice on Attorney Street. The cardinal’s parishioners didn’t want that hospice. But Cardinal Jim was courageous. Sweets admired the man, even though Jim had lobbied against him, had tried to get Isaac to appoint an Irish PC.

  “And where is our king?” Sweets had to ask.

  “That boy’s no king. He craps in his pants morning, noon, and night.”

  “Where is he, Wig?”

  “At the Seventh Avenue Armory.”

  “What the hell is he doing at a goddamn shelter in Harlem?”

  “Sniffing around, like he always does.”

  “Sniffing for what?”

  “Dirty old socks. The white boy’s been living at the armory for a week.”

  “He disappears on us and moves in with a bunch of homeless men? That’s weird. He’ll miss his own inauguration.”

  “I’d love that, Sweets. The town runs better without a mayor.”

  There was malice in what Wig had said. He’d been chief of the mayor’s detail, had guarded Rebecca Karp, who sat like a spinster at Gracie Mansion and would see no one. Wig had been her enforcer. And Isaac had sacked him, thrown Wig off the mayor’s detail.

  “We’re going up to the armory, Wig.”

  “Not me, bro’. I’m not wiping the Pink Commish’s ass.”

  “You’ll wipe when I tell you to wipe, or I’ll send you to Staten Island to guard all the cow pastures.”

  “You been around that white trash too long. You beginnin’ to look like Al Jolson, a white boy with tar on his face.”

  “I’ll flop you, Wig, I swear.”

  “Take my gold shield. I’ll sell fried catfish on a Hundred and Twenty-fifty Street. I’ll make a better living than any police commissioner.”

  “I’m glad. But you’re still going to the Seventh Avenue Armory.”

  He’d inherited Isaac’s black Dodge and Isaac’s sick chauffeur, Sergeant Malone, who swallowed pink milk to calm his ulcer. But Sweets preferred to drive himself. He sat up front with his point man. Wig didn’t have a daddy who was a millionaire dentist, like Sweets. He’d been brought up by a parade of uncles and aunts on Lenox Avenue. He’d gone to high school in East Harlem and belonged to no honor societies. But he did graduate. Sidel, the wandering police scholar, had talked at the high school, had come with Sweets, one of his rookie adjutants, and Wig hadn’t listened to a word, but he’d fallen in love with Sweets’ size, six feet six. If the Police Department accepted black giants, then why not Wig? He worked as an auto mechanic, took a crash course in criminology, and passed the police exam. He entered the Academy when he was twenty-two and never even served at a precinct. He was picked up by the First Deputy’s office, went undercover, and was like a black Hawkeye in Harlem, sniffing out drug dealers and ambitious bandits. He was shot in the head and was shoved off roofs and fire escapes. He was the most decorated cop in the City, after Vietnam Joe Barbarossa, who was even crazier than Wig until he married Isaac’s daughter, Marilyn the Wild. Joe and Wig had sworn to kill each other. Part of the venom came from the fact that they were so much alike. They had no fear out on the street. They’d both dealt drugs and were supposed to be assassins for hire. But Joe didn’t have the aura of the Purple Gang around him. He had a suicidal sister and a suicidal wife.