Secret Isaac (20 page)

The bear undressed and climbed in with Sylvia and the sleeping cop. William moaned from his corner of the bed. The cop was having a nightmare. He muttered, “Mama, mama,” and pulled most of the blanket on top of him. Part of his leg was exposed. The skin was bitten down near the shank, and the calf muscles seemed to twist into the bone. The cop must have had rickets as a baby. Isaac entered Sylvia. Three in a bed. Three in a bed. She clutched his back and moaned louder than the cop. Isaac was in the middle of a slow despair. Men were dying around him. The Special Pros had more of a grip on the murders attached to Whores' Row than Isaac could ever have from his stinky hotel.

23

T
HE
bear had a troubled time. He couldn't tell where he was. Then he remembered that Sylvia lay between him and William the cop. The bear was still on Rivington Street, hugged by Sylvia Berkowitz in his own bed. Images of Marshall, Mangen, and Manfred Coen crept into Isaac. The worm chewed off lumps of him. His misery was complete.

He dressed without disturbing Sylvia and the cop. He watched the two bodies rub and make a creaky music. He wasn't jealous of the way Sylvia turned from Isaac's empty spot and reached for William in her sleep. Isaac had to get out of there.

He walked to Centre Street. Becky's carpenters wouldn't be biting into walls at two
A.M.
The culture committee had made enormous progress in a week. The bastards had reshaped the ground floor. They were grooming the old Headquarters for a party that would celebrate the beginning of Becky's lease. The pols admired her. She'd stolen a building from the City of New York and was ready to evict her only tenant, Isaac the Pure. All the big-time Democrats would come out for Becky Karp. Rebecca was contemptuous of Isaac. She sent out invitations for her party to everyone but him.

The phone was ringing in Isaac's office. Son of a bitch. “Hello,” Isaac said, “hello, hello.” It was one of Sammy's live-in aides. His Honor was missing from Gracie Mansion again. Isaac shouted into the phone. “Get Becky Karp. She owes the City a favor or two. She can grab a nightgown to cover her tits and go looking for Sam.”

His bitchiness began to gnaw at him. The Mayor was an old man. He'd had problems with his memory before. He could have an attack of senility and lose his way in the streets. Isaac took a cab up to Cherokee Place, where he'd found His Honor strolling in his pajamas two months ago. But there was no Mayor Sam on Cherokee Place. He wondered if His Honor could have gone to an Irish club in the area. Sammy must have belonged to twenty of them. His favorite was the Sons of Dingle Bay, on First Avenue. The Sons had installed a sauna on the premises, because His Honor loved the idea of a Finnish bath. The club wasn't dead at three in the morning. Isaac saw pecks of light behind the screens in the ground-floor window. He had to knock and shout his name to get in. “Isaac Sidel … I'm here for Mayor Sam.” A few retired cops were playing poker in the game room. Isaac didn't stall. He plunged into the sauna with all his clothes on. The Mayor sat on the sauna's lower deck with a towel under his bum to protect him from the heat of the wood. He was with his toy commissioner, Tiger John. Two old men in a room built like a large dollhouse with rocks burning on a crib that was placed in the corner. “Laddie,” the Mayor said, “you'll sweat like a pig if you don't make yourself a little more naked.” The Tiger agreed. Their raw bellies moved up and down. They didn't seem surprised to have Isaac in their room.

Sweat poured down from Isaac's eyes. He could feel a hot blowing in his ears. “Your Honor, you ought to notify a few of your aides when you have long hours at the club. They worry about you, and then they call me on the phone.”

“Jesus,” the Mayor said, “you can't have a dry bath away from home without disturbing the peace … Laddie, you didn't have to come on my account.”

“I thought you'd like to know something. Mangen visited me at my hotel.”

“Ah, the great god himself. What did he want?”

“He had some crazy tale about whores and cops.”

“Whores and cops?” His Honor said. The Tiger's belly continued to heave up and down.

“It wasn't important,” Isaac said. “Mangen's on his usual crusade.”

The bear had to get out. His coat and pants were boiling on him. He left Sammy Dunne and the PC on their wooden deck, with the rocks burning in the corner. The Dingle Bay boys cursed and flung their poker chips behind Isaac's dripping back. A blue Chevrolet was parked in front of the club. It had a curious chauffeur, Coote McNeill. McNeill shared the fourteenth floor with Tiger John at the new Police Headquarters. He had the longest tenure in the Department. He'd risen out of the youth squad twelve years ago to become Chief Inspector. His underlings called him “the McNeill,” because he was supposed to be descended from a famous tribe of kings that controlled the lands of Galway until Oliver Cromwell beheaded the last McNeill. Isaac thought it was a lot of shit, but if the old man wanted to make up his own line of kings, who was Isaac to begrudge him?

The McNeill poked his head out the car window. “Sidel, where did you get such a red face?”

“It's my fault. I was in the bath with Sammy and John. I shouldn't have worn my socks … are you waiting for His Honor?”

“Yes,” the McNeill said. “Somebody has to take him home. Sam's not the walker he once was. He's forgetful now. He could turn the wrong corner and lose that mansion of his.”

“McNeill, did you ever know a boy named Dermott? Mangen swears he's a police spy.”

Coote McNeill spit into his palm like any king of Galway. “It's a bit of a scandal, son … believing Mangen over us. You should come to Headquarters with your own kind. There's too much dust on Centre Street. Isaac, it's gotten into your eyes.”

“The dust will clear,” Isaac said. “Fat Becky is throwing me out … you'll have me for a neighbor sooner than you think.”

Before the cops moved to Chinatown, Isaac was the strongman of the Department. All the unsolvable items, all the mysteries, went to him. His blue-eyed boys flashed in and out of the five boroughs, grabbing for clues. But Isaac had gone to sleep. He crept among rats and mice at the old Headquarters. Now Coote McNeill had sway over Chinatown and 1 Police Plaza. With a fumbling PC like Tiger John and an absent First Dep, McNeill had a house to himself. He owned the new Headquarters. He was a little old man about to retire.

Isaac crawled back to his hotel. Sammy's hot box at the Dingle must have smoothed the worm in Isaac and unstuffed his head. Mangen wasn't daft at all. Some fucking dance was going on with Mayor Sam and the McNeill. Tiger John shuffled between them. The Police Commissioner was an errand boy. That senile old Mayor had been stringing Isaac along, playing him for a goose. Herzog's Bellow, His Honor had muttered at the synagogue in Queens. Herzog's Bellow. Sammy was the shrewdest one of all.

Where did Dermott belong? Was he a silent member of the Dingle Bay club? It was crazy to Isaac. Crazy shit. Should he mount an investigation against the Old Man of City Hall? He couldn't even marshal two good boys to protect Annie Powell. Things were slipping past Isaac the Pure. Was the McNeill Annie's goduncle? It was a happy family that Isaac was trying to bust. What did a few corpses mean? The Mayor had his sauna bath. The world had to be all right.

Annie Powell was lonely without her Robinson Crusoe. He'd been a kind roommate to her. Jamey O'Toole. He wasn't a nuisance in the end. He didn't have to climb into the hall when a customer arrived. Annie had lost most of her trade. Even the decrepit Irish sailors wouldn't come to her. She ranted at them, cackled songs that didn't remind them of the Old Country. It wasn't Dublin she sang about. It was a fish between her legs for somebody named the king. She was serenading Dermott across an ocean, calling to her man. She didn't believe in weather or the ravages of time. She refused to wear underpants, stockings, and blouses in the fall. She had a coat, a ragged slip, and one of the king's old undershirts to put on.

She was lonely, lonely, lonely without O'Toole. Tiny Jim was her last tie to the king. She could smell Connemara on him, sheep droppings, Castledermott—the house that wasn't Dermott's house—salmon struggling in the water, the smoke of a turf fire, bananas and cream, that dead cow in the road. Jesus, she was a girl in a jewelry store, selling her smile to customers, until Dermott pulled her out of there. But he shouldn't have bought Annie from her mother though. She didn't like a man to pay for her in cash. She could forgive the mad look in his eye, the twitch of his knife. A man could mark Annie Powell if he loved her enough. The king shouldn't have left her alone.

She sat with the three friendly witches of Ninth Avenue, Margaret, Edna, and Mary Jane. They had whiskey and hot potatoes that the witches chewed without their teeth. Margaret, Edna, and Mary Jane wouldn't live indoors. They hated the contraptions of a kitchen, pots and things, the flush of a toilet, radiators, windows, pipes. They couldn't have tolerated a roof over their heads. They needed the howls that came off the river at night. So they camped in the street. They had their home of boxes, crates, and rags strewn around them in a kind of haphazard open fort.

The girls welcomed Annie Powell. She had all the signs of a rag lady. She was a younger, more beautiful version of themselves, a witch with a damaged cheek. She muttered like the girls. She told obscene stories about the Irish male, who had to tuck in his balls for centuries because he was always on the run. She wore the same misspent articles on her body as they did. Nothing matched. One of her socks might be brown. The other green or yellow. The girls were natives of Clonmel, Wicklow, and Dun Laoghaire. They could accept a witch from Sunnyside. County Queens it was. A patch of the Old Country. She secured whiskey for them. They passed the bottle from mouth to mouth. They were widow women, girls who had lost their husbands forty and fifty years ago. They knew about love. They could remember nights under the quilt. Mother Mary, that's a man inside me sleeping gown! What's he doing in there? Those husbands had died young. When the memory of it shook them, they would raise a horrendous cry on Ninth Avenue. They could stop traffic for twelve blocks with their keening. They looked at Annie Powell and realized that she was a lovesick girl.

Annie didn't keen with Margaret, Edna, and Mary Jane. How can you mourn a live man? Oh, there were deaths aplenty. But her king was in Dublin town, having his sausages and marmalade with the Fisherman's people. What was a girl to do? A car passed near the fortress of boxes, a blue car with an old man hunched behind the wheel. The crook of his back wasn't unfamiliar to Annie Powell. When did Coote the Fisherman get from Castledermott to Ninth Avenue and North Ameriky? She stepped over the boxes in her ragged skirts and called after the blue car, so she could interrogate the Fisherman, ask him about the king. “Coote,” she said, “wait for me.”

The car paused at the end of the block. Annie the witch went over and stuck her face in the window. “How are you, Mr. Coote?”

The Fisherman smiled. “Fit as a fiddle,” he said. “And you, love? Have you been stuck in any fogs lately?”

“It don't fog much in New York,” Annie said.

“It's a pity I can't help you the way I did in Connemara. I brought you down from Cashel Hill. Me and those lads of mine. But you shouldn't go on picnics in foul weather …”

“Would you like a sweet potato, Mr. Coote? I can ask Edna to bake one up for you.”

“Thanks, love, but I've got the indigestion. Sidel must have given me his worm.”

“Who's Sidel?”

“You know him. The boy who walks around in bum's clothes.”

“Father Isaac,” she said.

“Have you been talking to him, love? Did you tell him about Dermott and me?”

“I don't remember.”

“He's a nasty fellow, that Father Isaac. Has he made any indecent proposals to you?”

“None. He likes to buy me champagne. He thinks I'm his daughter.”

“You mean the famous Marilyn? That girl's been married seven times.”

“She must have the itch … I wouldn't want seven husbands under my skin … how's the king? Does he have a new girl by now?”

The Fisherman said, “No, no. You're his sweetheart. He worries about you, love. He says, ‘Why is my Annie on the street?'”

“I owe him money. I have to pay it off.”

“What kind of money?”

“He stole me from my mother for five thousand dollars.”

“Five thousand? You can borrow that from me.”

“What's the use? I'd only push my debt around … if he wants his Annie off the street, Mr. Coote, tell him he has to come for me.”

“I will,” the Fisherman said. And he drove off, leaving Annie with the king awash in her head. She had a sweet potato with the girls. She guzzled Irish whiskey. She thought of Marilyn. How did it feel to be seven times a bride? Annie was only married once, but she was
twice
a bride. Dermott's bride she was. Bride's bride. It was all a hoax. Blame it on the king and his donkey. The donkey had given her away in the cool of an Irish church. She had to take the wedding band off her finger. There was small magic in that church. She was still Annie Powell, the same Annie. Dermott's secret bride.