Secret Isaac (11 page)

“Schapiro, talk to me. What pimp are you working for?”

“Arthur Greer.”

“That's insane. Why would Arthur send you after me?”

“Dunno … he said stick to Isaac. That's all.”

“Did he give you a message for me?”

It was a stupid question. Schapiro himself was the message. A fat kite. Isaac wasn't supposed to ask about Dermott anymore. Why? How often could the First Dep trot to Stephen's Green? Dublin wasn't behind the Jersey cliffs. You couldn't reach the Shelbourne by rowboat. The king was jittery about having Isaac in New York.

“Morton, be a good boy. Give Arthur a hug for me. Tell him Isaac doesn't like mysteries. The king can have his exile. But I intend to open him up.”

He shoved the captain uptown. He would have liked to pitch him over the roofs of Houston Street, up to Lincoln Center and Arthur Greer. That would have been a sensational kite. No matter. The captain would be in disgrace. He couldn't hold on to Isaac the Pure. Captain Mort should have been out looking for catfish in Eastchester Bay. What was he doing with a gun in his pants? Was there a society of old captains for sale? It didn't make sense. Who was organizing the other Captain Morts? Not Arthur Greer. Arthur didn't have the claws to dig that deep into the Department. Isaac would have known. He had his spies in the Commissioner's office. The First Dep could have broken up any ring of ex-captains that was lending itself out to pimps and crooks. Isaac wasn't asleep. He began to dial his office from a telephone booth. He'd put a fix on Morton Schapiro, find out what the old captain's been doing in the last year or so.

Isaac could have sworn he was in Dublin again. A drunken man and woman were having a mean little fight outside his telephone booth. Their slaps seemed pathetic to Isaac. They maintained a slow dance of arms and legs. Then the man got vicious. He had the woman by her hair. He shook her and shook her as Isaac came out of the booth. It was one of those freak encounters. He recognized the woman beneath the roots of her hair. The drunk was assaulting Marshall's wife. Had Sylvia found a second husband in the streets? Isaac tore the man's fingers out of her hair, dragged him into the booth, and closed the door on him.

“You have terrific friends, Mrs. Berkowitz.”

Isaac was pissed at himself. Where was his squad of “angels” that was supposed to prowl for Sylvia? Why should
he
have stumbled upon her after leading Morton Schapiro on a little chase through Soho? Was some miserable tinkering god giving out gifts to Isaac? Or maybe a worm can navigate with its hooks. That punk in his belly had steered him to Sylvia.

He took her into an artists' saloon, treated her to black coffee and cigarettes. The artists at the tables seemed to feel a kinship with Isaac. They must have taken his sunken cheeks as a sign of poverty and powerful, suffering thought. The First Dep had traveled far from Centre Street in his days and nights as a bum. He'd moved beyond some kind of maddening pale. Isaac was less and less a cop.

“Your husband's been bawling for you,” he said.

Doses of coffee and cigarettes had revived Sylvia Ber kowitz. “Isaac, don't be his mama. Marsh will pick up a new survival kit … a Barnard student to scrub his underwear.”

“Got any cash on you?”

“No, but I'll sing carols outside a restaurant.”

“Sylvia, you're in the wrong season. It isn't Christmas yet. You'll starve. Who was that clown you were with?”

“Nobody special. I met him in a candy store two hours ago.”

“Do you have a place … a home?”

She didn't have to answer him. Marshall's wife was living among the garbage cans. If she had that much of a need to break away from Marsh, Isaac wasn't going to twist her head around. “Come with me.”

The First Dep had a small apartment on Rivington Street. That's where he kept most of his suits. He gave the apartment to Sylvia.

“Isaac, will you stay with me?”

He could remove her filthy blouse, wash her back, and bring her over to his mattress. Who would be the worse for it? Not Sylvia. Not him. And like some magical rabbi, Isaac might be able to soothe her so she'd want to come back to Marsh. But that child he was making in Jennifer Pears got in the way. The old bum was turning chaste. He left her food money and a number where he could be reached. He was down the stairs before Sylvia had the chance to thank him or crawl into his sleeve. She wouldn't have minded raping Isaac the Pure.

18

S
OMETIMES
he doubted whether he had an office or not. What was going on at the thirteenth floor of 1 Police Plaza? He demanded independence, a footlooseness, the right to range about the City in dirty pants. And then he wondered why his “angels” should function so well without him. His rat squad would probe underground and surface with a bundle of crooked cops. Isaac had put the squad into motion. He'd trained his men to go for blood.

He had other “angels,” other squads that were putting out for him. They couldn't deliver the king's Irish donkey, O'Toole, but they did dredge up morsels on the king himself. They'd gone into New Haven, sought out Dermott's career at Yale. They had his transcripts, his dormitory rooms, and notes from the master of his college, from professors, from New Haven's former Chief of Police. It seems the lad had been thrown out of school in a gentlemanly way. The Yale Corporation invited him never to come back. The reasons weren't clear to Isaac's men. Cops had been on campus looking for Dermott Bride. He was operating a sort of smuggler's ring inside the college. Dermott secured stolen radios, television sets, cameras, fishing rods, and other tripe for Yalies and college groundsmen, dishwashers and cooks. He'd get his supplies from some nigger gang. But no one could tell who that nigger gang was. Isaac smiled to himself: that kid went into business with Arthur Greer. He didn't break with the Devils at all. Arthur's old gang swiped the radios, and brought the merchandise up to Yale.

Isaac looked through the transcripts: it was at Yale that the kid had shortened his name, become Dermott Bride. Isaac could swear that the king never left Arthur's gang. The Clay Avenue Devils were running Whores' Row.

But Isaac's men couldn't pick up on Dermott after he got out of Yale. What happened to those sixteen years between New Haven and the Shelbourne Hotel? How did Dermott groom himself with so much mystery and finesse? Isaac's mind was knocking. He decided to rest. He used the morning to invade the Little Red Schoolhouse. Jennifer wouldn't have a cappuccino with him. He had to propose to her from the doorway that led to the playground on the roof.

“You'll divorce that schmuck,” he said.

Her eyes burned a green that was so fierce, Isaac had to grab the wall. “What schmuck are you talking about?”

“Your husband. You'll divorce Mel and marry me.”

Isaac already had a wife, Kathleen, who was becoming the empress of Florida with all the condominiums she had built in the swamps around Miami. Kathleen couldn't stand Isaac, but she liked being Mrs. Sidel. She didn't need a penny from the boy, and he'd have to strangle Kathleen to get a divorce out of her. Isaac wasn't thinking of practicalities. He'd fight the laws of Miami and New York, grow into a bigamist, if Jennifer would allow him to be the father of her child.

“Isaac, you must be sick. Eight or nine meetings in a hotel room don't make a marriage. I was fond of you before you ran away to Ireland … that worm of yours appealed to me. I liked your crazy room … your filthy pants … the way you talked. But that doesn't mean I'd ever leave Mel.”

“Try me,” Isaac said. “I'm as good a father as that schmuck.”

“Isaac, if you come here again to annoy me, to talk of marriage proposals, I'll scream downstairs for the cops. I don't give a damn what kind of commissioner you are. I'll have somebody arrest your ass.”

Isaac disappeared from the Little Red Schoolhouse. All those infants in their classrooms began to disturb him. He thought of their moms and dads. So many mothers and fathers living settled lives. Isaac had stations where he could come and go, an office, a room, an apartment to store his clothes, but he was like an animal who existed on the streets. The patriarch was longing for a proper home.

He cruised uptown, ignoring traffic signals. Colors blinked at him. Isaac didn't care. Nothing could break his stride. Cars and trucks had better watch out. You'd have to pay a stiff fine if you ran over the First Deputy of New York.

Annie wasn't at her corner, and Isaac despaired. She was
his
family, even if she revealed her crotch at the sight of him to drive Isaac away. And Dermott? Dermott was family too, though Isaac couldn't explain the connection there. He'd bound himself to the king and his “bride.” He'd become lonely at fifty-one, the self-sufficient Isaac, the
brain
of the City Police, who was used to shoving men around like waxed pieces on a board. Chess was too complicated for his dead “angel,” Manfred Coen. Isaac loved to play checkers with Blue Eyes. But the First Dep was weary of games. He'd squash the secret rumblings on Whores' Row, the complicated, mysterious shit, and then demand a leave of absence. Sam was snug in the Mayor's house. “Hizzoner” could survive without Isaac Sidel.

He saw Annie totter out of an Irish bar near his hotel. Her face was beginning to heal. But she still had the shadow of a “D” on her. Property of Dermott Bride. She didn't snarl at Isaac, or raise her skirt. She'd passed the morning drinking stout, and she was looking for an early customer, a john who'd pay for her necessities: tampax, lipstick, and beer. That was the only diet Annie could remember. She had enough stout in her not to feel hostile to a nosy, digging cop. “Father Isaac.”

“Annie, I …”

“If you say anything, one word about a French restaurant, I'll squat right here and piss on the sidewalk. Can't you take a girl to a human place … without waiters in black coats who bow at you and want to kiss you on the back?”

She lured him into a Greek dive where Isaac himself liked to go when he was wearing his bum's pants. The restaurant had its own rationale. The waiters weren't Greek. They were Syrian, gruff, sloppy, and lecherous. They uncorked bottles of retsina with their powerful tongues. Annie loved resin-flavored wine. She drank with Father Isaac. He didn't question her about the king. She would flee from the table, and Isaac would have to drink retsina alone.

“Annie, I have a daughter who's a lot like you.”

“Mister, keep your daughters to yourself … if you give me twenty bucks, I'll wiggle my ass …”

That whorish mumble pained the First Dep. She was a madwoman who went down for men in the street. No pimp had taught her to smile. Arthur Greer might have exploited Annie's invisible mark. Disheveled, bitten, she was still the greatest beauty on Whores' Row. It didn't help her much. Even if there had been a school for prostitutes, Annie couldn't matriculate. She'd scream, stick out her tongue, tear off her bra at the wrong moment. If Isaac hadn't put two of his “angels” on her, she wouldn't be alive. They were so expert at their jobs, Isaac had his troubles spotting them: two blondish lads at a far table. They must have arrived at the First Deputy's office after he'd gone to live in his bum's hotel. He couldn't recollect their names.

Isaac wasn't concerned about the sense of diaspora in his own platoons. His “angels” could disperse wherever they liked, so long as they were loyal to him. He had Annie to consider, and the girl confounded Isaac. She was a hooker who didn't know how to bait a man. Her clumsy whore's life belonged to some ritual that was outside Isaac's ken. What weird dream was she acting out? Annie taking vengeance on herself? The retsina came to Isaac's help. It was better than splits of champagne. All that resin in the wine must have loosened the girl. She sang to Isaac.

Who's the Rose of Connemara?

The Queen of Cashel Hill?

Derm had a lady

And the lady aint no more.

She couldn't carry a tune. The lines slurred out of her. Isaac wished she'd go on singing for him.

“Castledermott,” she said.

“What?”

“You need a license to fish, you dope.”

He'd play to her, tell her what she expected to hear, and then he'd stitch his own tune out of what she said.

“Where can I get this license?”

“From the Fisherman … he'll break your balls if you steal trout from his pond. Poachers can get killed. It's happened before. But it's Dermott's castle. He fries the bread.”

Isaac didn't have the faculties to compose a tune. Castles? Fisherman? Trout? “Annie, how do you find Castledermott?”

“Put your hand under my skirt … that's where it is. You'll reach the right fish.”

He'd have to ignore the gibberish about her genital parts. “Was that castle inside a hotel?”

“Prick,” she said, “who's the Rose of Connemara? Me or you?”

He felt ugly gorging her with wine. But he couldn't break her riddles unless she drank some more.

“Did the Fisherman try to hurt you?” he said.

“You crazy? An old gent like that. Father Isaac, you ask funny things.”

A waiter sneaked up to them with two of those long retsina bottles. “Get out of here,” Isaac muttered. He didn't need a waiter's tongue to open his wine. Isaac bit into the cork and pulled.

“Mister, see my boots?”

Isaac looked. Annie was wearing sandals today.

“I only buy boots at Switzer's. None of your shitty stores. My man won't let me touch Irish paper money. It's got germs. Bulges in your pocket. It's indecent for a lady to carry so much cash. But how can you pay for an ice cream cone with a banker's check? Unless you bring the donkey.”

“Is that O'Toole? Was Jamey your protector? Then why did he turn on you?”

“The donkey doesn't turn. He's too big.”