Secret Isaac (27 page)

Isaac pointed to a fat clerk. “Take that junk off the wall and ship it to your old chief with the compliments of Isaac Sidel. No … tell him, Love from the Commissioner. He'll understand.”

Cops were gathering outside the Chief Inspector's office. Stories had spread like a crazy fire in the building: the “Commish” would march into a room, breathing hell on his captains. You couldn't avoid the scrutiny of Isaac. He had a menace sitting on his brows. One wrinkle of his eye, and a man was doomed. Isaac snatched a lowly sergeant from the hall and brought him into the Commissioner's office, made him a master clerk. “Sergeant, I want you to take every cunt in the First Dep's office, every creature who worked for McNeill and Tiger John, and throw them to the Badlands. Give them precincts in the South Bronx.”

That's how Isaac began his reign at 1 Police Plaza.

29

T
HEY
drifted into Headquarters, blue-eyed boys rescued from the provinces. Their boss had come home. The boss seemed gloomy in his Commissioner's coat. His eyes had shrunk since they last saw him, months and months ago, when he sank into the ground and disappeared, in order to destroy the pimps of New York City. They understood part of his gloom. He missed his old sweetheart, Manfred Coen.

They talked about the worm in his belly. “It's eating him up. Soon there'll be nothing left of Isaac.” But Isaac survived. He was teaching again at the College of Criminal Justice.

It was just before election time. People in the class were wearing buttons that Becky Karp produced in less than a week: VOTE MS. REBECCA. It was her war cry to women and men.

The buttons enraged Isaac. He built his lecture around them. “Flotsam,” he said. “Politics. Ms. Rebecca Karp.” The Commissioner had developed a machine-gun language. He shunned sentences, threw words and particles out at the class. He pounced in front of the room in a coat that hung on his body. He could have been a scarecrow, or any ragged man, with coal-black eyes.

“Buttonface. Whorehearts … lovely hour to vote.”

He snickered on his feet. Then he turned articulate, muttered a complete sentence to the class. “They know how to fuck us, the lords and ladies who manage our lives.”

His stalking near the blackboard had begun to mesmerize the student firemen and cops. It didn't matter what the Commissioner said. The class would have gone to hell with Isaac. “Those darlings have picked a beauty for us. Rejoice. The people's candidate, strong as apple cider. Our Lady of the Buttons, Ms. Rebecca Karp. How do you become a Mayor in such times? You step on an old man's back, that's how. You rise up on his shoulders and watch him sink. Then you manufacture a million buttons. You distribute them to the faithful. And you promise a lot. A white borough for the Irish, the Italians, and the Jews. Dental clinics for the Latinos and the blacks. A paradise in Far Rockaway for the over-sixty-fives. Boys, girls, it don't mean shit. The planet is running low. The subways are having a heart attack. You can't tell the difference between garbage and pennies in the street. But go on, pin Rebecca to your blouse. Who knows? It might do you some good.”

There he was, insulting the next Mayor of New York. How many Police Commissioners are prophets and fools in one gulp? The worm drove through him with its many tails. There had to be a spy in the class.

Isaac hovered close to the door. He couldn't escape the green eyes of Jennifer Pears. He looked for signs of growth in her belly. Isaac wanted evidence of
his
child. He found nothing but natural curves.

“What month is it?”

Jennifer stared at him. “November.”

“No, no,” Isaac said. “For the child.” He couldn't recall the pregnancy of his own wife. What was Kathleen when she was carrying Marilyn the Wild? Did she have a gargantuan waist by the second month? Blast an old cop's memory! He'd have to go before the Medical Board and prove he was a sane “Commish.” He'd curtsy for the bastards and count the fingers on his left hand.

“It's the third month,” she said. “You can see a little bulge if you pull my skirt apart.”

She took Isaac by the elbow and led him out of John Jay.

“Have you decided to marry me?”

“Shut up,” she said.

“We can't go to my hotel. The pimps would cut our throats. They're not fond of Police Commissioners and their girlfriends.”

She brought him home in a taxi cab. Isaac could feel the doorman smirk at him. He never liked the East Side.

“Where's Mel?”

“He's working, you idiot.”

“And the little boy … Alexander?”

“He's at school. Isaac, what's wrong with you?”

He was a lost, anxious child under his Commissioner's coat. He shivered in his socks. Jennifer had to unlace his shoes while Isaac growled at her. “Woman, I won't sleep with you until the husband goes …”

He crept into the coverlets, a frightened dog-boy with hair on his arms and a wild fur over the rest of his body. Nothing could sooth a “Commish.” He had a foulness in his heart. The dead seemed to follow Isaac. They wouldn't lie still. He'd buried Coen, he'd buried Annie Powell. He brought rabbis in for them. What more could he do?

He made love to Melvin's naked wife. He touched that thickening in her belly. The fur smoothed on him as he pushed into Jennifer Pears.

He couldn't stay very long. Jennifer's digital clock blinked twenty to three. Alexander was coming from the Little Red Schoolhouse. Jennifer didn't wear any clothes to the door.

“Can I see you tomorrow?” Isaac said.

“Tomorrow's Election Day.”

“So what?”

“Mel will be here.”

“I thought the husband'll be out capturing votes for Ms. Rebecca.”

“Isaac, don't be a prick. Rebecca doesn't need votes from Mel.”

She went out naked into the hall and kissed Isaac on the wrinkle over one eye. “Come Thursday. For lunch.”

He scowled in the elevator. Doormen couldn't intimidate him. He had the monkey at the plugboard dial Headquarters and ask for the Commissioner's car. A surly boy named Christianson, who'd chauffeured Tiger John, arrived in a black Mercury. Isaac could have changed drivers. But he liked the boy's silences, his contempt for every other vehicle on the road. Christianson swept around fire trucks, pushed buses out of their lanes, challenged any police car that dared crawl in front of the “Commish.” The boy had a telegram for Isaac. It wasn't in its usual cellophane jacket.

“Who opened this?”

Christianson shrugged his boyish shoulders. “Dunno, boss. I found it on your desk that way.”

“You,” Isaac said. “Look at my face. I'm not Tiger John. You tamper with my mail again, and you'll have to drive without your kneecaps.”

“Yes, boss.”

Isaac unfolded the telegram.

POLICE COMMISSIONER
N.Y. CITY-N.Y
.

SIDEL MEET ME ST. STEPHENS WED
10 AM URGENT

THE KING

“Christianson, what does this say to you?”
“Sounds like crazy talk.”
“Do you know where St. Stephen's is?”
“Could be a church somewhere.”

John must have taught his chauffeur never to commit himself. He'd have to sack the boy very soon.

“Christianson, take me to Aer Lingus. Right now.”

Isaac left for Ireland on Election Day. He wasn't curious about the results of Rebecca's little pilgrimage to glory. She'd become Mayor-elect soon as the polls shut down, and the City would have a broken duck, His Honor, Samuel Dunne. Sammy deserved whatever crippling he got. He shouldn't have grabbed at whores from City Hall. But the Party wouldn't forsake its Old Man. Who can tell? Ms. Rebecca might give him the gatekeeper's job at Gracie Mansion.

Isaac had his own problems. The “Commish” was rocking over the water (in an Irish plane) on the strength of a miserable telegram. He didn't trust the words. Little Dermott wouldn't have begged for Isaac in such a bald way. He wasn't a showy man. He had too much breeding to sign a telegram with his pet name.
The King
. Someone else had signed it for him, and written the goddamn message. Whatever it was, Isaac couldn't avoid it.
Urgent
, it said.
St. Stephens. Wed. 10 AM
.

He was at Dublin airport on Wednesday morning, around half-past eight. He wasn't Moses Herzog on this trip. Isaac had little use for camouflage. He didn't come over to kill a man. He was only the “Commish.” He hadn't booked a room at the Shelbourne. He was returning to New York on the afternoon flight.

A cab brought him into Dublin. He hadn't bothered to convert his dollars into Irish pounds. The driver took his money without any qualms and let him off at the northwest gate of St. Stephen's Green. It could have been August. Isaac had the same chill about the ears. He strolled along the rim of the park. Men and women churned by him in their November clothes. It was a school day. You couldn't find laddies hunching in the grass. The white and brown ducks were gone. Isaac didn't see a bird in the old pond. He passed the stone bridge. A man was sitting inside the gazebo. His head was upright, under an eight-piece woolen cap.

Isaac could recognize a king by his ears. Aristocratic they were. Without points, or hanging lobes. But that dark Irish-gypsy face had a strange, unbending manner. A live man don't sit with a perfectly cocked head. Dermott's eyes were open. He had a Crotona Park grin. His neck was wired to the gazebo wall. His throat had been slit. The blood congealed under a napkin that had been thrust into the collar of his shirt. Isaac didn't have to guess. The king's bodyguards must have murdered him. They'd done a terrific patching job. His ankles and wrists were wired up, and you'd have to look down his collar to peek at the blood. “Ah, you poor son of a bitch, you shouldn't have come here. Dublin aint for you …”

What was the use of unwiring him? His neck might drop off. The blood began to soak through that bib inside his collar. Isaac left the king undisturbed. A park warden would discover the dead man in the gazebo and call the Irish gardai. The cops would shrug it off. They'd hold the corpse at Dublin Castle for twenty hours and declare it a “painful case,” altogether unsolvable, like any gangland killing, American style.

It was a fine touch to put that eight-piece cap on his head. The king's scalp of black, black hair might have brought attention to itself. You can't be much of a killer without a love for detail. Isaac strolled back to the northwest gate. The king's bodyguards were there, four old men in identical eight-piece caps. Isaac nodded to Tim Snell, that old sergeant from the Chief Inspector's office.

“Morning, Tim … lovely work, that … wire a man by his neck.”

Timothy smiled. “We thought you'd appreciate it, Isaac.”

“Did you cut him with his own knife?”

“Yes, we did.”

“Then that telegram came from you.”

“Naturally,” Tim said. “I composed it with the king's fountain pen. Took me half the day. To find the right wording, you see … we wanted to celebrate your new job. Congratulations, Isaac. It's not every old bugger of a cop who can stand in Stephen's Green and talk to the Commish.”

“Don't let the title fool you, Tim. I'm the same lad you drove through the quays three months ago. It's a bit crude to murder your boss.”

“Him? He was nothing to us. Dirt under your thumb, that's all. Mr. Dermott Bride. A stoolpigeon he was that licked his feathers and walked out of the Bronx … we work for a real king.”

“The Fisherman … you slit throats for Coote McNeill.”

“Shhh,” Tim said, with that smile of his. “It's not nice to mention names in a public park. Why don't you come with us, love? We have the automobile across the road. We can continue this conversation with cushions under your ass … and don't you scream for the cops. They're good boys, the gardai. But dumb. They won't be much help to you.”

It was instinct that preserved Isaac the Brave. He caught Timothy with an elbow and shoved him into the other old men. The teeth clattered in their heads, and their caps fell to the ground as they gave a little sigh. Isaac bolted out of the park like a rabbit in city pants and shoes. The old men recovered their hats and chased after the “Commish.” You could hear them huff along on Grafton Street. Isaac ran with his elbows wide. He could outwit four old murderers who had a hard time breathing.

He took to the alleys, chose a crooked trail from Grafton to Dame Street. He crossed the Liffey at Temple Bar and Wellington Quay. The river had lost its dirty color. It wasn't frog-green, like a piss-pond or a spittoon. It was almost purple under the bridge. November had cleared all the mud.

Isaac didn't keep to the south wall. He crept up to Mary's Lane and found a car-for-hire agency on Constitution Hill. He wouldn't get out of Ireland this afternoon. That corpse in the gazebo had interrupted Isaac's plans. He was going to pay a visit to Coote McNeill.