“No.”
“She’s a witch. Born in Roumania. She worked for the KGB, the FBI, you name it. A slut. I was crazy about her. That’s my weakness. I’ll do anything for a woman. Even now when I can’t get it up. Well, this Margaret kills a man of mine. My captain, Eddie Stafano. Then she runs down to New Orleans, seduces the Leonardo brothers for some Justice Department hotshot. Both dummies wanted to marry Margaret … and that’s where I come in. I mean, Margaret’s in her fifties. She’s not right for these boys. And we were preparing to ice the lady, give her some permanent grief, even though the boys didn’t have their hearts in it. They stall and stall. Isaac catches us in a sausage factory where we intended to finish the job. His backup is that fuck, Jerry DiAngelis. They shoot the goddamn shit out of us. The boys don’t survive. But I’m lyin’ still like an angel. I can’t move. A fucking farmer finds me. Comes right in off the bayou. So I whisper in his ear, because I’m a thinking man. The farmer makes a call. My friends arrive. They whack a bum who’s sleeping outside the factory. They substitute him for me, the new, dead Sal Rubino, who’s really dead, and they hide me in a little hospital outside Baton Rouge. It took five fucking surgeons to take all that poisoned lead out of me and sew me together, if you can call this ‘together.’ Because I’m a corpse, Mr. Caroll Brent.”
“Corpses can’t tell stories,” Caroll said.
“You’re humoring me.”
“I’m not. I just didn’t know you were alive.”
“That’s privileged information. Swear to me you won’t tell Isaac.”
“How can I do that, Sal? I’m a fucking cop.”
“I took care of your vig.”
“I’m a cop.”
“What if I told you you’ll never leave this house.”
“I still couldn’t swear. Or if I did, it would only be a lie.”
“Now I trust you. I don’t give a shit what Isaac learns. Tell him what you want.”
“Sal, why did you interfere with my vig?”
“I want to hire you.”
“How? To spy on Isaac?”
“No. To kill him. I could hire plenty of hitters. But it’s no revenge unless you do it. I want him to feel it in his fucking gut. I want him to get it up close, from his own boy.”
“It’s a pretty plan,” Caroll said, shivering in the dark. “But why should I kill Isaac?”
“For money maybe. Because I’ll cancel your whole fucking debt and I’ll make it so you’ll never have to borrow another dime. But that’s not the main reason. The man’s been using you, kid.”
“He uses everybody. That’s his nature. He’s the PC.”
“He sent you after Montalbán, right? As a solo, a submarine. But what if I tell you now that you were only a decoy, a duck, that the man is using you to hide a full-scale operation. You were put there to soothe Maria Montalbán, to calm him into fucking tranquility.”
“I’d say you’re full of shit.”
“Do I have to give you the names of Isaac’s task force? Let’s start with your old boyfriend, Joey Barbarossa.”
“Barbarossa? Isaac hates his guts.”
“It’s a scam, kid. Isaac’s been grooming him for months. Who would ever believe it? His personal commandos, a little squad of submarines.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I have my squeal in the Department. I always did. It’s not corruption, Caroll. You buy a little. You sell a little. And then I piece it together.”
“But you’re sitting in a wheelchair.”
“So what? I haven’t lost my tubes. I’ve always been a thinker.”
“I don’t care how many commandos Isaac has. I wouldn’t kill him.”
“I’ll wait,” Sal said.
“Dream, Sal, because that’s all it is.”
“I promise you, Caroll. I won’t make my move without ya. You’re my man.”
“I’m going to start paying Fabiano his vig.”
“You took the blue ticket. You can’t give it back.”
“Then call your soldiers, Sal. Tell them to whack me.”
“What for? You’ve been a kosher kid. I’ll wait. When the time comes I’ll give you the gun.”
“It’s going to be a long, long wait, Sal. They’ll have to build you another wheelchair.”
“What’s a wheelchair? Nothin’ but sticks. I’ll wait.”
6
He took the same route back, in the white limousine. He could have gone to One Police Plaza. But he believed that crazy man in the wheelchair. Sal wouldn’t kill Isaac without Caroll. Still, he should have confronted Isaac about those other commandos. He didn’t. He went home to his wife. Dee had returned from some party or board meeting. She had cold cream on her face. There was that distance between them he couldn’t define, as if she’d gone into her own fourth dimension. He didn’t tell her about that man in the wheelchair, Rubino, who’d risen like Christ. They made love. It was like some brutal exercise. He tied her arms to the bed because she liked it. He went deep inside her, held her bound wrists, and came like a hippopotamus. She could always draw noises out of Caroll. But he heard no noises from her.
He untied her arms. She laughed once, like a pony, and he wanted to ask her what the hell was wrong. If she did have a lover, Caroll would have to waste the son of a bitch. He smiled. Perhaps he ought to borrow a gun from Sal.
“Sweetheart,” he said. “Couldn’t we have a holiday tomorrow?”
“Holiday?” Her eyes were closed. He’d never survive without Dee. He was her child husband, the submariner, Caroll Brent.
“You’re never here, and now you want to play. We’re giving a party tomorrow for the PAL. You know that.”
Diana was grand duchess of the Police Athletic League. The Cassidys supplied baseball uniforms, gloves, and bats. Cardinal Jim and the Pink Commish both managed teams for the PAL. It was a world of Whitey Lockmans, but Caroll was the odd man out. He’d never even been to a baseball game.
“Couldn’t you have Susan prepare your agenda … and buy the hors d’oeuvres?” Susan was her social secretary. And she was much more vital to Diana than the submariner himself.
“I wouldn’t cater a party like that,’ Dee said. “I’m doing the hors d’oeuvres.”
He’d forgotten for a moment that his wife was a world-class chef.
“We played a lot when you were in Central Park. You could always come home for a quickie … or take my panties off in the police garage.”
“Behind the motor scooters,” Caroll said. “On one of the late tours … when half the precinct was asleep. But I’m not at Sherwood Forest anymore.”
“Is that my fault?”
The lovemaking had accomplished very little. Caroll couldn’t seem to crawl back inside Diana’s nest. He was a boarder at the “mansion.” It was where he kept his socks and service revolver …
He was afraid to fall asleep. He would dream of her with another man. And he couldn’t tell the man’s face in his dreams. It was some half stranger, indistinct. He dozed through the night with Diana beside him.
He went to Sherwood Forest in the morning, walked into his old precinct, a two-story converted brick-and-stone stable that was like no other precinct on the planet. There were no loiterers around, no bombed-out buildings. The traditional green lamps were tinier at Sherwood Forest and had a much softer glow. The attic was right over your head. There were no horses at the stable, only scooters and cars and ALTs, all-terrain vehicles that could follow any bandit across the veldt of Central Park. Caroll had loved this place, his own curiosity shop, a relic from another century. There was violence in all its five sectors, Adam, Boy, Charlie, David, and Eddie, and its forty foot patrols, but it didn’t seem to damage the fabric of Sherwood Forest. The precinct itself was in David, Sector D, at the Eighty-sixth Street Transverse.
The desk sergeant barely said hello. Two patrolmen were playing chess, and ignored Caroll. The detectives’ door was shut. His old commander, Captain Lucas White, couldn’t afford to be too
unfriendly. He was looking at Isaac’s angel. White’s office was near the women’s locker room. He was the one man at Sherwood Forest who had his own toilet. He would watch the female officers parade in and out of their lockers, or hide in the can and read for hours. But he had a crazy intuition about crime in the park. And he’d once been very fond of Caroll.
“How’s life at One PP?”
“Come on, Cap. I’m a submariner. I surface from time to time. East Harlem one day, Crown Heights the next.”
“And you just happened to float in here.”
“No. I was looking for Barbarossa.”
“Barbarossa’s doing his ping-pong … like Manfred Coen. And Caroll, do me a favor. Don’t come around again. You leave a shadow. And it might cover us all in shit.”
“I get ya, Cap,” Caroll said. He went out the precinct door, crossed to the other side of the stable, and walked into the old muster room, which had been turned into a lounge. The lounge had several upholstered chairs and a ping-pong table. Barbarossa, a thirty-six-year-old detective from Sherwood Forest, was playing ping-pong with an auxiliary policewoman. It was like foreplay, Caroll figured. Barbarossa never even had his eye on the ball. Ping-pong had become a sacrificial game under Sidel. There were no tournaments or championships in the Department. Manfred Coen had died in the middle of a game. Coen had left his curse. No one wanted to be another Blue Eyes.
“Joe, can I talk to you for a minute?”
“Talk,” Barbarossa said.
“Not at the table.”
Caroll knew that Barbarossa was a thief. Barbarossa sold drugs. He was also the most decorated cop in the City. He’d done two tours in Nam. He was the second- or third-last Marine to get out of Nam alive. He was in-country during the whole fucking fall of Saigon. That’s where he’d learned to play ping-pong. He was champ of the Embassy compound. But ping-pong couldn’t get him a promotion in Isaac’s Department. He’d busted too many heads. And Isaac had banished him to the veldt.
“Excuse me, darling,” Barbarossa said to the auxiliary policewoman. He wore a white glove when he played. That was Barbarossa. He would beat your brains out with that same glove. He’d rescued old women from hatchet-bearing husbands. And he’d probably killed some pushers during a big score. He was corrupt and crazy. And he was festering in Sherwood Forest. He only had the woods … and a ping-pong table. He’d been Caroll’s partner. But that was a long time ago.
“Joey, are you freelancing for Isaac?”
Barbarossa laughed. The scars along his mouth behaved like inchworms.
“Isaac’s been trying to hump me for years. He put me in this morgue.”
“But I’ve seen him turn a feud around for his own benefit. Joey, are you chasing Maria Montalbán?”
“Montalbán’s my hero.”
“But are you chasing him?”
“No.”
“I don’t believe you,” Caroll said.
“Buddy, kiss my ass.”
Caroll had to go sleuthing on his own. He took a train to the Lower East Side. He looked for suspicious panel trucks where Isaac could have placed a soundman. But he couldn’t find any more submariners. He looked for undercover cops. He crossed Montalbán’s district, picked it clean. There weren’t any floaters. He returned uptown and dressed for Diana’s party. The cardinal had brought kids from his baseball team. The kids wore cleats. Caroll bumped into Lieutenant Sarah Potts, police liaison to the PAL, which had its own civilian director. But there was always some kind of police presence in the PAL shop.
He’d been seeing Lieutenant Potts until Diana came along. Sarah was only a sergeant then.
“What’s it like,” she asked, “fucking a billion dollars?”
“I’m not sure,” Caroll said.
“We would have gotten engaged without that bitch. Does she suck you better that I did?”
Then Jim arrived, and Lieutenant Potts, who was Catholic, kissed his ring. “My two soldiers,” the cardinal said. “Sarah darling, you aren’t letting them shove you around at PAL, are you?”
“I kick ass, Jim. I always do,” she said, looking at Caroll.
“My own little daughter in Christ … I have to question this thug. Will you forgive us, dear?”
And the cardinal drew Caroll away. “Can’t you make some peace with Lieutenant Potts?”
“What can I do?” Caroll said. “I ditched her for Dee.”
“Then take her to lunch. Flirt with her for five minutes.”
“Forgive me, Cardinal Jim. But she’d want to go under the table.”
“She can’t force you, Caroll. You’re a free agent. God did give you a soul … you wounded the woman, for Christ’s sake.”
“I try, Jim. But I only make it worse.”
“Because your heart’s not in it. You’ve gone wild in the streets. You’re creating havoc.”
“I haven’t done a thing.”
“Don’t argue with a prince of the Church. If Isaac won’t pull you, I will.”
And the cardinal went off to chat with his team, the Manhattan Knights. The kids adored him. He was the most powerful manager in the PAL. He didn’t look to the Cassidys. He provided his team with a bus, a travel allowance, and a variety of catcher’s masks and mitts. He was ruthless in his search for talent. He raided whatever school he could, public or private. The Knights sat at the top of their division the last seven years. Caroll couldn’t understand the mumbo jumbo of baseball, but he got a kick out of this cardinal who could dominate an entire league.
Jim basked in the luxury of his Knights, with their red stockings and their blue-billed caps, until another man walked into the party. He looked like a circus bear in boy’s clothes. He had his own billed cap and gray socks. It was Isaac Sidel in the uniform of the Delancey Street Giants. The Pink Commish had come to advertise his own team. He’d outmaneuvered Jim. He was grabbing all the attention. What other PC would wear knickers in front of fifty guests?
Caroll started to smile. Then he saw Diana whirl around the bear. He noticed a curious delight in her eyes. The bear had touched her in places Caroll no longer could. Now he was able to read those nightmares of his. The stranger who’d been caressing Diana in his dreams had also worn a uniform. That’s why Caroll couldn’t recognize him. It wasn’t the uniform of a soldier or a cop. It was a ballplayer. And while Diana laughed, here in her living room, Caroll thought of homicide.
He could have warned Isaac about Sal Rubino. He didn’t say a word.
It was the cardinal who danced toward Isaac with a purple face.
“You’re a villain, you are, Isaac Sidel. Competing with my lads. They got all dressed up, and you had to steal their thunder with this charade.”
“I also have a team, Your Eminence. The Delancey Street Giants.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“And they don’t have a chance. You threaten the umpires with damnation if they make a call for my men. I have to put on their colors, or they might disappear.”
“I didn’t threaten,” the cardinal said. “I argued a couple of calls. That’s my privilege. I am manager of the Knights.”
“And cardinal archbishop,” Isaac said. “I’m only a commissioner, Your Eminence.”
“Formal with me, aint you, Isaac? I’m the bad bishop of baseball. Don’t make a spectacle of yourself. Or I’ll slap you in front of the boys.”
The big bear smiled like a baby. Cardinal Jim was his rival and his friend. But he turned gloomy when he glanced at Caroll.
“What were you doing up at Sherwood Forest?” he whispered in Caroll’s ear. His baseball cap was a size too small. It hugged his crown like an idiot’s hat.
“Looking for submariners like myself.”
“What submariners?”
“Come on, Isaac. You have a whole other detail covering Maria Montalbán.”
“Who told you that?”
“Donald Duck.”
“I don’t have a detail … Montalbán’s dangerous. I asked Barbarossa to look after you a l
ittle.”
“Your favorite detective.”
“He’s still a good cop out on the street. And he was your partner. He broke you in.”
“And you’re mounting an invasion against Montalbán and his school board.”
Isaac grinded his teeth. “Caroll, not here … we can have a long powwow under the bridge.”
“Afraid of Jim?”
“Shhh,” Isaac said, a bear in a baseball beanie.
“Rubino’s alive,” Caroll said.
Nothing moved on the bear’s face. There wasn’t a twitch or a blink.
“Did you hear me, Isaac? Sal Rubino crawled out of that grave you prepared for him in New Orleans. The shotgun party didn’t work.”
“How do you know?” Isaac asked, like some bored attorney.
“I met with Sal. Yesterday. At a Medicaid mill in Long Beach. The Oceancrest Manor. It’s a blind for Sal Rubino. He sits in a wheelchair. He dreams of you dead.”
Isaac covered his eyes with a paw. “I am dumb. It’s business as usual with the Rubinos. And I can’t tell why. Jerry DiAngelis is pushed into a corner. And Rubino’s captains are thriving.”
“He asked me to kill you,” Caroll said.
“And what did you say?”
“I told him I’d think about it.”
And the bear was smiling again.
“Isaac, maybe we should continue this talk in the toilet.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
“But Sal could have contracts out all over the place for your fucking head.”
“Then why advertise himself to you? No, kid. I’m a public character. Rubino had plenty of chances. He could have popped me a month ago. He was sending up a kite. Dear Isaac, I’m alive. Love from Sal. And you were the string.”
“And Margaret Tolstoy?”
The bear lost his jovial mood. “Who told you about Margaret?”
“Come on, Isaac. Half the Department knows she’s your sweetheart.”
“She’s a fucking FBI informant,” Isaac said.
“Who isn’t?”
“Margaret’s safe. For now.”
“And yourself?”
“Sal will go to his guns. But first he wants to eat my fucking heart out.”
Maria's Girls (The Isaac Sidel Novels) Page 4