Secret Isaac (12 page)

“Annie, did you live in that hotel with the king? Were you up in the Shelbourne? Was Jamey there too?”

He was beginning to grow frantic in his need for clarity. Why didn't he pursue smaller things, go for the nibble, like that Fisherman, whoever he was.

“I don't like yellow drapes,” she told him. “And they always say,
madam
this, and
madam
that. Why do I have to eat with seven forks? A fork for salmon. A fork for lettuce. A fork for soup. It's only silverware. You think he was happy being like that? I know Derm. He likes to stick his finger in the fish. He didn't care if I had my period …”

Could he talk about the scar now, the magical
D
?

“Annie, who …”

“Show me a barman who can pull a good pint, and I'll give you some of my kish … my man is particular. Don't you ruin the cream line on his Irish coffee. The donkey will have to drink a bad glass.”

She got up from the table. But she made Isaac sit where he was. “Annie, I could walk you home …”

“Mister, don't think of following me. I'm wise to what you're after. The fish stays in my pants. So forget it …”

The girl had fish on the brain. Was it some lovetalk between Annie and the king? She hobbled out of the restaurant, the Syrians peeking at the folds in her ass, drawing Annie in with faces hard as fish hooks. His “angels” didn't move from the chairs they were in. They wouldn't even acknowledge Isaac. He had to introduce himself to his own fucking men.

“I'm Isaac,” he said, feeling like an idiot. They didn't jump, those blond lads of his. “You're supposed to stick with her.”

He didn't like the harsh neutrality under their eyes. His “angels” should have been more passionate about Annie Powell.

“Isaac, it takes her half an hour to cross the street. We have plenty of time.”

“That's not the point,” he said. “You're supposed to make sure she gets across the street.”

They were slow in getting off their rumps. He asked them about Jamey O'Toole.

“Isaac, that quiff couldn't be in Manhattan. We would have spotted him ages ago.”

They left with toothpicks in their mouths and napkins on the table. He'd have to call his office and push them off the case. He wanted livelier boys on Annie Powell, lads he could trust. But he never called. Annie's obsession with fish had taken hold of Isaac. Was there a trout pond in St. Stephen's Green? Could Dermott fish from a window? The king would have had to concentrate all his magic and all his luck. Isaac was demoralized. His primitiveness had failed him here. Once he was a man who could sense the pedigree of any situation. Isaac had the gift. But he'd crawled into the Guzmann family and come out with a worm. The worm had blunted him.

Part

Four

19

R
OSE
, Rose of Connemara. Miss Annie Powell. She had to take an awful leak. Enough wine and beer in her to drown a Dublin pony. Father Isaac. She loved to torture that bum who came to her in clean and dirty pants. She wasn't going to be anybody's daughter. Not his. She was selling pussy. Nothing less. She didn't have to eat French dinners with a guy who wouldn't pull off her clothes. She'd had a thousand dinners with her man. He took her to places a bum couldn't afford to go. Steak tartare. She could read all the menus in the world. He let her swipe towels and doilies from the biggest hotels. She could powder her tits with pure Irish lace. Nobody owned her anymore.

The uncle was waiting for her under a lamppost. Mr. Martin McBride. He didn't look very grand. He's got a disease, they say. His lungs are turning to paper. The uncle was scared of something. He'd threaten Annie, then he'd offer cash. It was a disgrace for Dermott to have his lady working in the streets. She wouldn't accept money from this old knish.

“Jesus,” he said, “you'll get us all killed. Woman, can't you see? Everywhere you go there's a cop. It means nothing to pay them off. They're after blood. How many times do they have to kick you in the face?”

“I've been kicked before. By uglier people.” She ran a finger over that invisible scar. “How's the man?”

“Are you crazy? Dermott won't talk to me. You can't reach the lad. It takes a month to get a call into Ireland. And Dermott never picks up the phone. I have to talk to one of those bulls he keeps around him. ‘Sorry, Mr. McBride. But the king isn't here.' Sending a telegram's no good. How do I know who's going to read it? We're in the dark, woman. I take instructions from that nigger, Artie Greer.”

“What does he say about Derm?”

The uncle wrinkled his nose. “Merciful God, how can you trust a nigger gombeen man? He swears Dermott's playing golf in his rooms. Woman, do us a favor, please. Walk out of here. I'll get you an apartment in Forest Hills. You can have your own beagle. Six cats if you like. Move, I'm telling you. Shuffle off. We'll all die if you stay too long.”

“Dermott knows where I am. Let him come for me.”

“Jesus, don't you learn? The nephew's a dead man if he lays a foot in Manhattan. That's the lousy deal they made.”

“I didn't put my name on that pact, Martin McBride, so stop bossing me around.”

“But you're
his
. You're Dermott's. That's the way they'll look at it. And they'll reach out for you again and again and again.”

Annie smiled for uncle Martin. “Not to worry your head about it. I have me a benefactor. A real live beauty. Tough as they come.”

“Who?”

“What's the difference? He buys me champagne. In baby bottles.”

“Tell me who it is?”

“That high commissioner. Father Isaac.”

A grayness overtook uncle Martin, and he rocked on his heels. “That bandit … he's the worst of the lot. Woman, he kidnapped me, swear to God. Brought me to a phony precinct. Isaac. He makes his own police stations. He has killers under him …”

“So what? He wants to marry me.”

Uncle Martin developed a hacking cough; he hugged the lamppost and tried to catch his breath. Annie had to console him.

“I'm only fooling. He's too big a fox to marry. Me with a husband and all. Though I hear Irish weddings aren't too legal in America.”

“Woman, eat your tongue. This Isaac, he's got ears in every window.”

He trundled away from Annie, bumping into lampposts to regain his strength. Annie went upstairs. She lived in a rooming house that attracted outcasts like herself: rummies, Army deserters, whores unbridled by any pimp. It was cheaper, lower, more slovenly than Isaac's hotel. But at least it had a name. Lord Byron's Rooms. Most cops wouldn't invade the premises. The stairs might collapse under their feet. They could lose their holsters in a darkened hallway, or their whistles and their memorandum books. Annie felt secure. She was safe from unwanted company.

She wouldn't think of locking her door. The rummies would only have swiped her doorknob together with the lock. They liked openness at the Lord Byron. But they didn't poke in Annie's room for a bottle of milk. A man with tremendous hands and feet was resting on her mattress. Jamey O'Toole. He could have been Robinson Crusoe. He'd stopped shaving at the end of August. Now he had a crooked beard. He wore the same thing: pants, shirt, and socks that clung to him like pieces of bark. Jamey sweated under his clothes. He was afraid to come out from Annie's room. She'd hidden this Irish donkey, stuffed him away at the Lord Byron. It was strange to watch such a big man shiver. She couldn't desert Jamey O'Toole. The donkey had been good to her. He'd mothered Annie in Ireland, kept her out of harm, saved her from a tribe of gypsy thieves.

No drunkenness could ruin Annie Powell. Dermott's “bride” had been slippery and shrewd at that Greek restaurant. She shoveled bread and cheese under her skirts while she ate with Isaac. Now Jamey had a meal for himself. He ripped the bread with long fingers and gobbled lumps of cheese. Poor man, he couldn't take a bite without Annie. Bread would drop out of his fists. Most of the cheese landed on her mattress. She wasn't too proud to stoop for the donkey. She had to feed Jamey O'Toole. She was grateful for the teeth in his mouth. He still remembered how to chew.

“Jamey, I've got thirty dollars in my pocket. You could jump on a bus, you know.”

“They're watching the buses,” he said, with cheese stuck on his tongue.

“I could walk with you. I'll scream if they come around.”

“Never mind, Annie girl. We'll sit. They're dumb. You can bless the saints for that. They couldn't figure I'd be in your room.”

“Why do they want you so bad?”

“Ah, it's a pitiful story. We had the leverage on them. Then Dermott made the peace. He told himself he could spread the waters and hop over the Irish Sea. I begged him not to go. He's nothing but a prisoner over there, Dermott is. They ‘yes' him, they bow to the king. But let him try to disappear.”

“Is the Fisherman holding Dermott?”

“Yeah, the Fisherman. And other guys.”

“Isaac, is he one of them?”

“Who the fuck knows? You can't trust the commissioners or the cops. Isaac has his blue-eyed boys. They'd shoot my ears off if they could. But it's the other cops that worry me … old ladies with white hair they are. Retired sergeants. They work for the big McNeill.”

She sat with him on her mattress, a loving girl, putting crumbs in Jamey's mouth. What else could she do? When she brought a john into her room, Jamey had to stand in the hall. Customers were suspicious of Robinson Crusoe. They clutched their wallets before and after they made love to Annie Powell. She didn't care. Business was slow. She'd rather fish for crumbs than go out looking for a john.

Miss Annie was a native of Queens. Monday to Friday she took the BMT. She worked in a jewelry store on Fifty-seventh Street. A display girl she was. She didn't handle the expensive goods. She had a lovely figure, you see, and the manager, a Mr. Giles, stationed her near the window. She was meant to draw the customers in. That's how she met the king.

He had a passion for books, old books, first editions, things like that. Faulkner and Mr. James Joyce. It was an odd habit for a crook. But he hadn't forgotten Columbia College, and he could afford any book he liked. He had several dealers in town. The best of them, Eichenborn, was next door to Annie's window. He was coming out of Eichenborn's with a copy of
Ulysses
, Paris, 1922, when he saw Miss Annie Powell. Giles had told her to blush if a man looked in. But she didn't blush at Dermott. She noticed the sockets of his eyes. He was coatless in February. And he had the blackest hair. He didn't seem like a man who would trifle in a jewelry store and let himself be used by Mr. Giles. Oh, but she had the wish: not in terms of silver and gold. She wasn't Giles' mercenary. If only that dark man would come in and talk to her and forget about the jewels. Giles could scream. No. He would have been timid around such a man.

Dermott didn't knock on the window. He never smiled. But he did visit Annie on his next book-buying trip. He marched out of Eichenborn's scowling hard. The lad had paid a stupendous price for a set of galley sheets that must have been living with the worms. The sheets were from
Soldier's Pay
, Faulkner's second book. They were in miserable condition: streaked, with ratty edges and cigarette burns. But Eichenborn knew his man. Dermott had a madness to collect. The dealer had been saving these galleys for months. When the bug bites, the lad will buy. Dermott had to have his
Soldier's Pay
. He could have hired a gimp to murder Eichenborn and get back most of his money. But he didn't mind being swindled by a man who loved books. He stood outside Annie's window with a twisted yellow rose. That was as much courtship as Annie could bear. She was sick of baiting men for Giles. She put on her coat to meet with Dermott. “I'm quitting,” she told Giles, who couldn't understand why a single rose should propel Annie out of his store.

She had no idea what to do about Dermott. Say hello or goodbye? He didn't rush her into anything. He had a quietness that Annie liked. They sat in a bistro. He talked of books. She wasn't a complete idiot. Ezra Pound meant something to her. It was a name, wasn't it? And William Faulkner's reputation had come to Queens. He showed her the galley sheets. My luck, she said. I had to fall for a professor with dark hair. There was no monkey business. He brought her home in a taxi cab. He didn't leave her stranded at the door. He had doughnuts with her mother and her two young sisters. Her mother felt a strangeness in the house. “How'd you get out of work so early?”

“Ma,” Annie said when she had a minute alone with her mother. “He's Irish, I swear. And a professional man. Dermott Bride. He teaches books.” Her mother refused to believe that a dark-haired Irishman could exist. “Anybody can call himself Dermott Bride. He has a Puerto Rican nose. Can't you tell?”