Secret Isaac (6 page)

He dialed Kathleen in Florida. It was four
A.M.
The wife had to be in bed with one of her suitors. “Kate,” he mumbled, “did
we
ever know a boy named Dermott?”

He had to ask her again. She yawned into the phone. “Isaac, go fuck yourself.”

So he was left with a Dermott he might have known, but didn't know now. Ned O'Roarke wouldn't have launched Dermott as a pimp. It couldn't have been Ned who made a “king” of Dermott Bride.

Isaac had Jennifer to console him three days a week. She was the only woman who could drive Dermott out of him. The worm never pinched Isaac when he was with Jennifer Pears.

But he had other pulls on him. “Hizzoner” was growing desperate. The
Daily News
vouched Sam would only get one vote in ten. He was told to remove himself from the primary lists. “Hizzoner” refused. He went on more excursions with Isaac. Then he had a heart attack in Gracie Mansion. He was carried to the hospital across the street. Rebecca sent a full page of condolences to the
New York Times
. People were already calling her Mayor Karp.

Isaac felt sorry for old Sam, but he was glad he didn't have to parrot little lies in churches, shuls, and social clubs. He did more strolling as Isaac the bum. Annie seemed to have fled from her corner. Lazar came out of his pornography shop to chat with Isaac. “Sidel, stop dreaming about that woman … I can get you a beauty with poems written on her chest.”

“Lazar, you didn't leave your shop to become my pimp … what happened to Annie Powell?”

“She's in the hospital … Roosevelt. They found her unconscious last night … somebody stepped on her face.”

Isaac hailed a patrol car. “Get me to Roosevelt Hospital, quick.” The cops were ready to laugh at the bum who was giving orders. “Call my office on your radio. I'm First Deputy Sidel.”

They ran up to Roosevelt with their sirens on. He found Annie in some rear beggar's ward. The nurses couldn't understand what this bum was doing with two cops. The cops took their eyes off Annie Powell. Her face was one, huge, distorted puff. The lips were split apart. The “D” on her cheek had lost its continuity. Its pith was broken and submerged. Dermott had erased himself from Annie. “Get her out of this fucking hole,” Isaac shouted to the resident in charge of the ward. “Put her in a private room.”

“Hey,” the resident said, trying not to look at Isaac's baggy pants.

“Prick, it's Police business … and stop blinking at me. I'll pay for the room.”

The patrol car brought him up to Marble Hill. Isaac burst into Martin McBride's eight-room flat. The old bagman was having dinner with a covey of nephews, nieces, and his wife. Isaac lifted him off the floor in front of everybody. The nephews weren't much good. They shrank from the mad bum who was shaking their uncle up and down.

“Martin, you tell me where Dermott is, or I'll squash you into a piece of shit.”

“Dublin,” Martin said, riding against Isaac's shirt. “The nephew's in Dublin town.”

“What's his address?”

“The Shelbourne. St. Stephen's Green.”

“Wasn't one scar enough for him? Did he order O'Toole to smash both sides of her face?”

“I don't know, sir. I swear to Christ. Dermott never talks to me …”

Isaac didn't return to the hotel. He went down to his monk's corner at Centre Street. He sat in the dark, his fingers rubbing under his nose. The king's in Dublin. Isaac had to murder him. It didn't matter that there was no logic to it. The creature was purring in his belly. That's all the encouragement a man could need. Isaac still had a cop's head. What did Annie Powell mean to him? There were other scarred whores in the world, plenty of them. He hadn't slept with this Annie, hadn't touched her. And she'd mocked his offerings of champagne. But he was already smitten by that letter on her face, Dermott's mark. He could have had his own inspectors swipe O'Toole off the street. Five or ten of Isaac's deputies for each of Jamey's arms. They would have unwired him. But Isaac would fix Jamey himself, when he got back from Dublin. Jamey was only a vassal to that king. It was Dermott Bride who had stepped on Annie's face. He was the lad Isaac wanted. He'd already booked a flight with Aer Lingus, crazy as it was. Isaac was leaving tomorrow.

He wasn't going to Dublin as the great Isaac Sidel. A trusted deputy might have doctored a passport for him. Isaac could have flown under any name. But he didn't want to involve his office. He used a crooked engraver, Duckworth, a thief that Isaac had kept out of jail. He had him smuggled into Centre Street with his bag of tools. The engraver was nervous. He liked thirty-six hours to “make” a passport. And he preferred his own darkroom off Canal Street, where he could exercise his artistry without any pressure from the First Dep.

“Isaac, are you sure there's a camera downstairs?”

“Duckie, why do I have to repeat myself? You've been here before. The photo unit was always in the basement.”

“But how do we know what equipment the bastards left behind?”

“That's what we're going to find out.”

Isaac grabbed a flashlight and they marched down three flights. Rats scurried around their legs. The smell of rat shit was enough to destroy a man. Isaac kept the engraver on his feet. Duckworth had his camera. The photo unit was intact.

The engraver took half a dozen passports out of his pocket. They were samples of his own work, names he'd invented. All he needed was a photograph of Isaac to go with any one of them. He would legitimize the photograph, fix it to the passport with the State Department seal he carried in his bag. Duckworth rummaged through the passports. “I can give you Larry Fagin O'Neill, Marvin Worth, Ira Goldberg … Isaac, they're practically real people. We're just gonna throw one of them your face.”

“Keep them for your other clients, Duckie. I have a name. Moses Herzog.”

The engraver was heartsore. “Why Moses Herzog? That will triple my work. I'll have to start from scratch. Fagin O'Neill isn't good enough?”

But Isaac was without mercy. Moses Herzog. That's what it would have to be.

Part

Two

10

T
HE
Irish stewardesses were gentle with this businessman, philosopher, poet from the City of New York. They fed him coffee and chocolate mints. The worm adored the taste of mint. Moses was asleep when they arrived at Shannon. Passengers disembarked. Then the plane took off for Dublin town.

His baggage was light. He figured on two or three days to dispose of his business with Dermott Bride. They wouldn't miss him at his office. Isaac had disappeared for much longer periods than that.

The cab ride to the Shelbourne cost him nearly three pounds in Irish money. It was a hotel with white pillars, a blue marquee, statuettes holding lanterns over their heads, tall windows, and a white roof. The Shelbourne sat opposite a long, handsome park. St. Stephen's Green. Isaac couldn't see the park from his window. But it still cost him twenty pounds a night. He'd have to kill Dermott and get out of here, or borrow from his pension money to stay alive.

He had no idea what Dermott looked like. Would the king materialize on the staircase and present himself, like a fucking Druid? You couldn't tell what magic Dermott owned in Dublin. But Moses had the rottenest luck. A man latched on to him in the lobby. It was Marshall Berkowitz, the dean of freshmen at Columbia College and vice-president of the James Joyce Society. Marshall had been Isaac's English prof during his one semester at college. He made a pilgrimage to Dublin every year to walk the streets of Leopold Bloom. How was Isaac supposed to know that Marshall always stopped at the Shelbourne? He had a new, young wife. She had bangs over her eyes, this Sylvia Berkowitz, powerful calves, and a thin, rabbity smile. Something wasn't right with her. Had she taken a graduate course with Marsh, fallen in love with him while they plowed through
Finnegans Wake
? It must have been a devastating courtship. Marshall could capture any man or woman with that purity he had for Joyce. He'd converted Isaac after the first day of class. That was thirty years ago. Isaac had wept at the opening of
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
. Moocows coming down the road. Molly Byrnes and her lemon platt. He was a barbarian from Manhattan and the Bronx. He hadn't known such language could exist. He followed Marshall everywhere, begged him to explain the meaning of this page or that. Isaac walked the campus with a fever in his eye. It couldn't last. Isaac's father deserted his family during Christmas, stole off to Paris in middle age to teach himself how to paint, a fur manufacturer with a craze in his head to become the new Matisse. Isaac had to leave school and help support the family.

He didn't read Joyce after that. He married an Irish woman who worked in real estate, four years older than himself. He became a cop. It was Kathleen who introduced him to First Deputy Commissioner O'Roarke, Kathleen who connected him to all the Irish rabbis who ran the Police Department of New York. It was her Irishness that made him a big cop. Now he had Marshall and Marshall's wife, both of whom had unmasked him on his first day in Dublin.

“Isaac,” the dean said. “For God's sake. What's a commissioner like you doing here?”

Isaac had an “agreement” with Marshall Berkowitz. From time to time he would recommend young boys for Columbia College, lads who were the sons or nephews of some cop. Isaac would interview them, and pass on his feelings to Marsh. He had an instinct for who would survive at Columbia and who would not. Marsh always went by Isaac's word.

“Isaac, how the hell are you?”

The First Dep had to shut him up in the Shelbourne lounge. “Marsh, I'm on a caper, please … you'll have to call me Moses.”

The dean's wife began to laugh. She took those bangs away from her eyes. There were blackish lines around them. Sylvia Berkowitz couldn't have slept a lot.

“Goddamn,” Marshall said. “Moses, come with us. You'll do your cop stuff later.”

“Where are we going?”

Berkowitz smiled. “To Number Seven Eccles Street.”

Thirty years couldn't wipe away
Ulysses
. Isaac knew that book. Number 7 Eccles Street was where Joyce had dropped Leopold Bloom.

“Moses, the Irish are a miserable people. A landmark, a literary property that's impossible to duplicate, and they molest the place. It's a shell of a house … but it still exists.”

So Isaac borrowed a sweater from the dean, and they went about the city. Moses had his jet lag. He couldn't remember buildings, monuments, and stores except a McDonald's hamburger joint. Trinity College was Only an old wall that bent around a street. They crossed the Liffey at O'Connell Bridge. Joyce could have his river and his quays. The currents seemed pissy to Isaac. Then it was O'Connell Street and the Gresham Hotel. “The Gresham's gone down,” Marshall said. “They frisked us the last time we went in for tea.”

These mutterings made no sense to Isaac. His ears were freezing, but he wasn't going to buy a hat in August. It was a turn to the left and up another street, narrower, with a row of gray houses. Then a turn to the right, a high street again with broken signboards and pubs with blue walls that had begun to chip and peel. A jump to the left and they were on Eccles Street, in what had to be a bitten part of town, a much lesser Dublin than Stephen's Green. Marshall led him by the hand to Bloom's house. The roof had been lopped off. The windows were boarded. Weeds showed through the cracks in the wood. The front door was torn out and replaced with ribbons of tin. The cellar was overgrown with harsh, bending flowers that were beginning to stink. The steps had mostly turned to rubble. Marshall swayed in front of Bloom's ravaged house. He was a heavy man, with a thickness behind his ears. The dean was about to blubber. Isaac heard a dry, hacking sound.

“Poldy,” he said. “Poldy Bloom … God save us from the Irish and ourselves. We don't deserve James Joyce.”

The Irish could destroy Dublin for all Isaac cared, long as they held Dermott Bride. Eccles Street was like portions of the Bronx. Bombed-out territories and a few pubs. Marshall recovered himself. He wanted to drag Moses to a second landmark. A chemist's shop important to Bloom. Sylvia rescued Isaac. “Marsh, why don't you go? I'll take Isaac back to the hotel.”

Marshall shrugged and kissed his wife, and he was gone from Eccles Street. Sylvia began to curse her husband. “Did you ever see such a big fat wobbly ass?… he was putting on a show for you.”

“His crying in front of Bloom's house?”

“That's not it. He
always
cries.”

Isaac looked at Mrs. Berkowitz. He was getting used to her sleepless eyes. Moses Herzog muttered to himself. He promised the worm he wouldn't cuckold Dean Ber kowitz. Swear on Dermott's life. Sylvia took him on another route. They didn't pass O'Connell Street. They were in a goddamn alley. Isaac couldn't have told you whether they'd crossed the Liffey or not. Sylvia's skirt was up. He had her against the roughened wall of some poorman's lane. He thought they'd get arrested on account of her screams. Sylvia could move against a wall like no other woman. She was wet, wet, wet, but Moses had no feeling in his prick. Was it the worm's doing? He'd have an operation, magical surgery that could cut that bastard out of him. Isaac had a revelation at the wall. He wasn't fucking Sylvia. Her hunger had nothing to do with him. Isaac had a terrible, crazy, killing need for Jennifer Pears. He hadn't even said goodbye to her. Just got on a plane. To avenge a whore with Dermott's mark on her. Bouncing into Sylvia cursed him with visions of Jennifer's body. Was it a kind of punishment? Moses' hell? Why couldn't he keep away from other men's wives?