Under the Eye of God (7 page)

“My kid,” David said, even though he wasn’t that much older than Marty Reisman. Years later, when Isaac studied the life of that other half-blind avatar, James Joyce, at Columbia College, he always thought of Reisman. Both of them had a sense of purity about their craft, both of them flourished with their fragile eyes.

But Isaac wasn’t in much of a mood to be nostalgic. He realized now why Cassandra’s Wall wasn’t in the city’s books. It wasn’t even registered as a club. It had no real address. It was part of David’s Beaux-Arts colossus, the Ansonia. He went into the bowels of the building with Amanda Wilde. No one frisked him at the door; no one bothered about his Glock. That was the mystique of Cassandra’s Wall. It only existed for its patrons. David hadn’t even supplied it with much of a lock.

There were no refreshments, and there wasn’t even a side bar. Its cavernous halls still had the debris of Plato’s Retreat, a mattress room where all the swingers congregated, where all the wives were swapped. It had the blue light of a bordello.

“Amanda, what’s going down here, huh? Is this the devil’s monastery?”

“Shh,” she said. “Cassandra’s Wall is where the richest men in the world come to gamble.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Isaac said. “I know all the richest men in the world. They’re real estate moguls. They live in Manhattan.”

“Isaac,” she said, “these realtors of yours, they’re only pretenders to the throne.”

And she led Isaac into a very dark room that didn’t have the same garish blue light. There were five men and a woman who stood in a tiny circle, chatting among themselves. The woman had a raucous laugh. She was wearing a backless blue dress; Isaac could see the lovely nodules of her spine, even in that unreliable light. She had a helmet of silver hair, and when she turned to face Isaac, the Big Guy’s knees began to wobble. She had a beauty that was beyond Isaac’s comprehension. Her face didn’t have one classic feature. Her nose was a little too long, her forehead a little too high, her brown eyes a little too far apart. But when she smiled, all the features fell into line, and her face was on fire.

Amanda introduced him to the five men, reclusive billionaires from the Old World; one was an Italian aristocrat who lived off his family’s accumulations; another was a French financier who had something to do with cement; the third was a Russian oil bandit who had a monopoly on railroad cars; the fourth was a chocolate magnate from Belgium; the fifth was a German publisher who owned companies everywhere. They were all polite to the Big Guy but had never heard of the vice president–elect. Mayor Sidel hadn’t even entered their mythology. He couldn’t remember their names. Claudio? Ivan? Igor?

But the woman’s face was still on fire. She must have been thirty or thirty-five. Isaac began to stutter.

“Your n-n-n-name?”

“Inez.”

And suddenly, Isaac felt murderous, as if he were part of some random kindergarten class and had been tricked and pummeled by his own teacher.
Inez
. Arnold Rothstein was alive and well . . . and living in the Ansonia.

He didn’t bother to chat her up. He bowed to all the billionaires and left Cassandra’s Wall without Amanda Wilde.

H
E CLIMBED UPSTAIRS TO DAVID
Pearl’s own retreat on the seventeenth floor. He had to wonder why the ex–boy banker would live in a labyrinth with low ceilings when he could have had a lavish piece of the castle all to himself. The Big Guy didn’t even knock. David was sitting on his window seat in a worn sweater. He wasn’t surprised to see Isaac.

“Dennis hadn’t come to the Ansonia to kill you, David. He was your very own gunsel.”

David smiled his wizard’s smile. “Indeed. Frank Costello lent him to me—the most loyal kid I ever had.”

“Jesus, Dennis was a grandpa. He was growing senile. He would have had to wear diapers all over again. Why did you send him after me?”

David whistled under his breath. “He would have nicked your arm, that’s all.”

“He was aiming for Martin Boyle’s heart.”

“I don’t have a moratorium on Secret Service men. They’re Calder’s peons.”

Isaac saw blue spots in front of his eyes. He wanted to strangle David, crack him open on his window seat. His own mentor, David Pearl, his
muse,
had been stringing him along.

“And Billy Bob Archer, did you hire him, too?”

“Sort of,” David said. “He was put there to shake you up, not kill you.”

“I suppose I’m your indispensable man.”

David laughed with that childish face of his. He hadn’t aged much in his castle. He had that same devilish enthusiasm he’d had when Isaac first met him. “You’re dear to me—part of my little family.”

“And is Amanda Wilde part of your family, too?”

“You could say that. She was my private secretary, still is.”

“But hasn’t she wandered rather far afield?”

“No, I catapulted her right into the election process . . . let her become the president’s astrologer—and mistress.”

“And is the president your own personal peon?”

Isaac was mortified. Had he been one of David’s peons from the moment his father had introduced them, almost fifty years ago?

“Isaac, you give me a little too much credit. I’m one lone bachelor with a dinosaur of a building.”

“Stop it,” Isaac said. “Calder is scared shitless of you . . . and so is J., I suspect. You’re the man behind Sidereal.”

David clapped his very delicate hands; the sound was like an echo from another world. “Bravo,” he said. “I buy up properties, and I sit on them. I never, never sell.”

“How much of the Bronx do you own?”

David picked at his scalp like some man in the middle of a brainstorm.

“You’d have to ask Amanda. She’s the one who keeps count. . . . I would say at least half.”

Isaac could have been sitting with Dr. Mabuse, the mad emperor of the underworld, or with another mad emperor, like Merlin. But this Merlin was a recluse
and
a landlord.

“And did your own minions torch the Bronx?”

The emperor smiled. “Some of them did, but I purchased most of the properties after they were torched.”

“And what could you possibly gain?” Isaac asked. “The Bronx will never come back. It’s been dying for thirty years.”

“Isaac, Isaac, that’s just a pinch of time. You have to think in centuries if you want to rebuild a borough.”

“But, David,” Isaac pleaded. “You won’t be here.”

“That’s not the point. You can’t create an empire on mortality charts. My strategy is crisp as a church bell. One day, Sidereal Ventures will tear down the Cross Bronx Express and build a highway under the ground. And I won’t put up a maze of shopping malls and warehouses in the old, deserted lots near the Cross Bronx. We’ll have brand-new neighborhoods.”

Isaac began to wail. “Why couldn’t you have told me? I would have helped you swallow up Robert Moses’ fucking tunnel in the sky.”

“Ah,” David said. “But not with Sidereal’s help. And I would have had to step out of the shadows. It was much too risky. I’ll stay where I am.”

That wizard with the narrow chest was the reincarnation of Rothstein. He was Manhattan’s new king of crime. The first AR sat with senators. His whisper went all the way to the White House. He could buy an apartment on Park Avenue, which had a covenant­ against Jews. Rothstein could bankroll any operation, legal or not. He’d had gambling dens, had owned a piece of the New York Giants, had invested in Broadway shows. That’s how he must have discovered Inez.

“David, are you as secretive as AR?”

The wizard smiled again. “Arnold wasn’t secretive enough. That’s how he got killed. Half the planet knew his steps. He had his own table at Lindy’s, sat there like a clerk. How many times did I meet him there, while he was writing up the day’s receipts on a lick of paper? He would send me out on errands. I’d deliver thirty thousand dollars in a paper sack to some politician or police chief. . . . ”

“But why didn’t you tell me you had your own Inez?”

Isaac had startled the wizard, caught him in a snare. “I don’t visit graveyards, Isaac. Inez is under the ground.”

“But I just said hello to her . . . at Cassandra’s Wall. She has her own helmet of silver hair.”

The wizard’s worry lines disappeared. “Ah,
that
Inez. She comes with the furniture. She’s a tart.”

“But she didn’t seem out of place with a little band of billionaires.”

“A tart,” David muttered again. “I found her, groomed her, gave her the clothes on her back.”

“Then why is she with those billionaires?”

“Why else? To distract them, to eat out their hearts . . . your lady with the silver hair is my secret agent.”

Isaac didn’t believe the wizard. “What’s her real name?”

“Trudy Winckleman. She was the sensation at a cathouse in Detroit—Isaac, you need all the edge you can when you’re betting a hundred million on one shot.”

Was Manhattan’s king of crime also an imbecile? Wouldn’t those other billionaires have perverted his plans and plied Ms. Trudy Winckleman with hard cash? But Isaac didn’t like David’s tricky smile.

“Did you know that AR once bet half a mil on one toss of a coin? He had to line his pockets with thousand-dollar bills. And he was always broke. He had betting fever.

He’d watch a cockroach climb up a wall and have to bet on its progress. He’d bet on a ball game. . . . ”

“Isn’t he the man who fixed the World Series of 1919?”

“A fishwives’ tale,” David said. “Gamblers bribed ballplayers in Arnold’s name. He had nothing to do with the fix. I wanted to sue fucking F. Scott Fitzgerald while he was still alive. He defamed Arnold, turned him into Meyer Wolfshein, a greenhorn with a forest of hair in his nose. AR had the softest voice. He spoke like a duke. He was much more elegant than an Irish scribbler from St. Paul.”

Isaac adored
The Great Gatsby
and Fitzgerald’s portrait of Meyer Wolfsheim, who understood that the world couldn’t thrive without some business “gonnegtion.”

“David, what was your hundred-million-dollar bet about?”

The wizard began to purr. “What else? The presidential election of ’88.”

All of Isaac’s goodwill was gone. He wanted to rip off David’s scalp.

“You bet against the Democrats, didn’t you?”

“Kid, I’ve always been in your camp.”

Isaac cursed himself. He didn’t need Cassandra’s Wall to tell him what was going down. David had bet on him, and him alone, bet that Isaac would be the new president, not J. Michael Storm. All the rumblings in the press had started from the Ansonia’s seventeenth floor.

“You fucker,” Isaac said. “You’re betting that Michael will take a fall.”

“Like Humpty Dumpty,” David said. “But Calder won’t be there to pick up the pieces. You’ll inherit the White House from him.”

“And what if I don’t let it happen?”

“Ah,” David said. “Play Cassandra. Be my guest. I’ll double my bet.”

“I could run to Tim Seligman,” Isaac said.

“And have him sink his own Party? Not a chance. Tim will behave.”

“Then I’ll shove Teddy Neems into the top spot. I’ll give all the marbles to Calder’s own vice president.”

“Teddy’s my bagman. He’ll do whatever I say. . . . Isaac, you can run around like a renegade, shoot up half of Manhattan with your Glock, and you’ll still be Prez.”

“And my first act as president will be to fry your ass. . . . David, tell me, where does Trudy Winckleman live?”

Isaac was already defeated. It was Manhattan, where any hunter could become the hunted in a matter of minutes.

“Where else?” David said. “At the Ansonia. In Inez’s old apartment. It’s poetic justice. I put her where AR kept his own true love. Did you know that Inez died in my arms? I didn’t abandon her after Arnold was killed. She always went to bed with AR’s picture under her pillow. She could have gone back to dancing, joined some revue. I told her it wasn’t dignified. I paid her bills. We had tea every afternoon. . . . ”

Isaac grew delirious with David’s recollection of Inez. Most of his rancor was gone. He was in love with the first Inez and the second. David had kept Inez’s apartment intact, not as a museum, but as a devotional, with cherry wood dressers, an armoire, a mirror that had once belonged to Lillie Langtry . . .

Isaac’s head swam with all the details. David didn’t have to tell him where Trudy Winckleman’s apartment was. Like most gamblers, AR had suffered from triskaidekaphobia, a morbid fear of the number thirteen. But he’d tried to wean himself away from that fear, according to David. So he parked Inez on the thirteenth floor. She griped and griped, but Arnold wouldn’t relent. He had to place his own mistress and himself in jeopardy. It titillated him.

Isaac didn’t care.
Triskaidekaphobia
, he muttered to himself and ran out of David’s labyrinth.

T
HE BIG GUY WASN’T BASHFUL.
He knocked on Inez’s door. No one answered, and he wondered if she was still in the bowels of the Ansonia with her billionaires. And just when he was about to give up, she came to the door in an old cashmere bathrobe that must have belonged to Arnold Rothstein’s original lady. Her smile hurt the hell out of Isaac.

“Mr. Mayor,” she said in that raucous voice he remembered from Cassandra’s Wall. “Did you want to play cops and robbers? Are you here to frisk me? Come in.”

It was a museum, no matter what David said. The drapes seemed out of another century. There was a photo of AR and Inez on the mantle in Trudy Winckleman’s elongated living room. AR seemed a little coarse in the photo; he didn’t have the beauty that Isaac liked to imagine for him. His mouth was too large, his forehead too broad, his eyes a little too far apart. But Inez had a voluptuous, staggering blondness. She stared out at Isaac like the most brazen of girls. She must have been a handful for AR. Did she flirt with Babe Ruth? Did she conspire with other kept creatures in the building? Flo Ziegfeld had his mistress on one floor, his wife on another. God knows the damage Inez must have done.

Trudy Winckleman caught him looking at the picture. She was as bold as Inez in her helmet of silver hair.

“Mr. Mayor, would you like to move in?”

Suddenly, Isaac began to fumble with his words. “Miss W-w-winckleman,” he muttered.