Maria's Girls (The Isaac Sidel Novels)

by Jerome Charyn

“Montalbán,” he whispered.

  Diana tried to pull away from him.

  “Montalbán.”

  She stopped struggling and opened her eyes. “What of it? Have your detectives been following me?”

  “I don’t have to hire detectives. I get my information free of charge. You’d better tell Isaac to nail Montalbán on his own. I don’t like Jew commissioners taking advantage of my daughter.”

  Cassidy let go of her wrists. The anger in her eyes unsettled him. He couldn’t startle her. She had her own lunatic steel. He couldn’t frighten the girl.

  “I could keep Isaac on permanent vacation,” he said. “It wouldn’t be hard. He has enemies. He jilted Rebecca Karp. He has a Roumanian whore who makes love to him twice a year and sleeps with every bandit in the United States.”

  “Papa,” she said. “Do whatever you want.”

  She whirled her body toward the door. And Papa could hear the music of her bones. It took his heart away.

  “I’ll expect you at nine,” he shouted at his disappearing daughter. “The charity ball. Don’t forget.”

  She met Carlos Maria Montalbán at a Newyorican café on Norfolk Street. The countermen called him “Jefe.” He had a gold star in his left ear. He wore high-heeled shoes. He had a cape that was much longer than hers. She might have seduced him if she hadn’t been married to Caroll. Desire was like a curious clockwork to Diana. Its only pull was inside her head. She was coldblooded about all the men in her life. She loved Caroll. And she was lending Isaac her charm to use on Maria Montalbán. He didn’t hold her hand. But he began his courtship rite.

  “Move in with me. You won’t regret it.”

  “Carlos, you promised you weren’t going to talk that way.”

  “Look, I’m not asking for a quick feel,” he said. “Divorce the cop. I’ll take care of you. People make fun of Newyoricans. They talk about the Cuban middle class. The miracle men of Calle Ocho, with their Little Havanas. I piss on Little Havana. And I’ve never been to San Juan. I have no mother country. I was born on Norfolk Street. That’s enough.”

  “You were in Vietnam,” she said.

  “Vietnam? A lot of beer and smoke.”

  “And Joe Barbarossa,” she said. The romance went out of Montalbán’s eyes.

  “Yeah, Joe. My own blood brother. He was always doing favors for the Embassy chiefs. He was their number-one delivery boy. And a thief. I ought to know. Joe worked for me. I sold hash to half the Marines in Saigon. I was their own little supply sergeant. And Joe was my collector. We were a terrific team. But he started ripping off my other collectors. And he stole from the till. I had to give him an extra allowance so he’d stop stealing … but what’s it got to do with me and you?”

  “I’m curious … about Joe. My husband used to bring him home to dinner. But he never talked about himself.”

  “That’s because every time he opens his mouth he has to admit two or three more crimes.”

  “Does he still work for you?”

  “Never. He belongs to the big israelita. Sidel. I think he’s waiting to whack me out. That’s his specialty. Whacking people. And I have to dance around Joe. I could get him busted. But what’s the good of it? The israelita would send someone else. And Joe at least is a familiar face … has he been bothering you, trying to bite your ear? I’ll have to tell him I’m your fiancé. That will cool him off.”

  “You’re not my fiancé.”

  “Yes I am. I announced it to everybody.”

  “Carlos, I’m going to leave the table.”

  “Not so fast. We have to talk about books. I need your Monday Morning Club. I need libraries for all my little ones.”

  “The chancellor is your cousin. He’ll get you books.”

  “Alejo? He can’t even supply my district with toilet paper. There’s a shortfall in the whole system. Alejo has no books.”

  “And so you steal them from other districts.”

  “Joe steals. Not me. I’m still the supply sergeant. I trade pencils and rulers. I give. I get.”

  “Carlos, you can borrow books from the Monday Morning Club.”

  “I never borrow. It’s not in my nature. Borrow means you’re in somebody’s debt.”

  “Then what can I do?”

  “Marry me and read to my little ones.”

  “I’m already married,” she said.

  “I’ll forgive you. But I’m not so crazy about that cop of yours. He put one of my teachers into the hospital. It’s a bad sign.”

  “Then why would you want to marry his wife?”

  Maria Montalbán began to smile. He had gold rings on his fingers. He had a gold watch. He had a silver tiepin and a golden tooth. He occupied the biggest table at the Newyorican café. Where were all the children he was supposed to abuse? The only children she had met in the district adored Maria Montalbán.

  “I’ll help you open all the libraries you want. I’ll find you books. I’ll read to the children if you like. But that’s as far as it goes.”

  “A professional lady,” Montalbán said.

  She was getting fond of his gold tooth. His hand brushed hers. I’m in love with Caroll, she started to sing, like Little Red Riding Hood living on nursery rhymes. She’d been imagining herself in bed with Maria Montalbán all this time. It was like a curious disease that had invaded her system. She hadn’t been pursuing Maria for Isaac’s sake. She was following her own mad dream.

  And then Maria broke the spell. He took a handkerchief out of his pocket, dangled it like some coy magician, dropped it on the table, and asked Dee to open the handkerchief. There were watches and rings and bracelets inside, all gold. This wasn’t about children, Diana realized. It was about plunder and patronage. The libraries had been some excuse to get near Dee. He wanted her as his concubine, kept in gold. He did steal from the children, he stole from their mouths, or he wouldn’t have had such colossal booty. And now she foraged like a spy.

  “Lovely,” Diana said, picking out a ring she couldn’t help admire. It hadn’t come from Cartier. A Newyorican goldsmith must have hammered it together in Maria Montalbán’s own streets.

  “Take another,” he said.

  “No, Carlos. I couldn’t.”

  “What’s a little gold among friends? You don’t have to live with me … not right now. I’m a patient man. Drink your coffee, dear.”

  She took another ring and a bracelet with a kind of coldbloodedness she didn’t even know she had. “Carlos, who’s your jeweler?”

  “Would you like to meet him, dear?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “I’ll arrange it. Next week.”

  And he had to run off to his various occupations, the schools he had to supervise, the lieutenants he had to scold, the rubber bands he had to collect. He pulled his cape around his shoulders. In his high heels he was just Diana’s height. She watched him strut to the door. The whole café acknowledged Carlos. Old men sought to grab a piece of his cape.

  “Don’t touch the material,” he said.

  And then he was gone. Diana felt bereaved for a moment, though she couldn’t really say what she had lost. She was richer by two gold rings and a bracelet. She left the café in her red hood, the wind beating down upon her back. She wasn’t comfortable in the forlorn streets of Loisaida, which had a pair of feuding princes, Isaac and Maria Montalbán.

  A gang of warrior girls fell upon Diana at the corner of Norfolk and Stanton. The girls had painted hair. They looked like Lower East Side Indians. They flailed at Diana, called her a bitch, their mouths like chimneys that could manufacture balls of smoke. They grabbed Diana’s purse, but they weren’t satisfied.

  “Beg for your life, bitch.”

  And then a hand got between them, wearing a white glove, and it parted these warrior girls, flinging them across the gutters, while it grabbed Diana’s purse.

  “Joe Barbarossa, what took you so long?” Diana said from under her hood.

  “I was cleaning my glove … you shouldn’t be h
ere, Diana. Not with Maria. He gives you some rings, and then he sets you up with a gang of cuties, so they can stage a little war dance and steal them back.”

  “How do you know Carlos gave me some rings?”

  “Diana, he’s always giving rings to uptown girls. It’s a habit with Maria.”

  “Did he give out rings in Vietnam?”

  “All the time.”

  “And what makes you so sure I took them from Carlos?”

  “Jesus Christ, the café is bugged. There are microphones in the flowerpots and the espresso machine.”

  “Vietnam Joe,” she said.

  “I can’t take chances. Maria has a criminal mind. And he might have hurt you.”

  She watched the little scars near his mouth. They revealed much more than his eyes, which were a dead blue. But the scars seemed agitated. His entire jaw danced.

  “Isaac shouldn’t have let you into this. It’s not a party. Maria makes up his own rules. He could cut your throat.”

  “Or shoot Isaac under a bridge.”

  “That wasn’t Maria’s work. He’d have shot Isaac and ripped his throat.”

  “And what’s a man like that doing as the superintendent of a school district?”

  “Maria’s an angel. The superintendent before him was caught undressing a little girl.”

  “Please don’t say that,” Diana said.

  “It’s true.”

  “I don’t want to hear it. It’s sordid.”

  “It’s still true … come on, I’ll give you a ride uptown.”

  “I’ll take the subway,” she said. And she abandoned Joe.

  She was late for her next appointment. She’d rented a studio for Milan Jagiello near Carnegie Hall. It had a hundred and twenty chairs. It was a loft with windows that opened onto a rat’s view of the Hudson River. She felt like she was looking at a trickle of water between two enormous garbage cans. But she couldn’t find another room that was big enough for Jagiello and his Czech orchestra, which hovered between sixty and a hundred and ten souls, depending on the mood of the musicians. They were like a squabbling family, with brothers, sisters, husbands, wives. Jagiello would often hire a starving Czech off the street. He had no funds. Diana had to pay for everything. But she admired Milan. He could move his arm like a magic snake and deliver Mozart, Beethoven, Mahler. He often had to tap a musician over the head. His first violin was a former mistress. He would moon at her in the middle of a performance. He couldn’t survive without chaos. But Diana preferred him to ordinary conductors, who distanced themselves from an orchestra, who never descended into the pit to argue over a score.

  Milan had no musicians today. He’d given them a week’s rest before they toured the high schools and junior colleges of New Jersey. And he was glum away from his little colony.

  “Deedee, I’m blue, really blue.”

  Milan was a moaner. He would wait like a little dog for Diana to suggest a meal at the Russian Tea Room, and then his eyebrows would curl at the prospect of drinking borscht around the managers and musicians of Carnegie Hall. But she couldn’t tempt him.

  “I’ll always be a boy in America,” he told her. “The big managers won’t let me breathe. They’re jealous of the Jagiellos.”

  Milan wasn’t descended from any line of Bohemian kings. He was the son of a tailor. He’d starved in Prague, suffered from vitamin deficiency, had gone mad before he was ten, and studied the piano at a state asylum. He was considered a prodigy. Music professors would run to the asylum and meet with this mad boy. He was soon dining on cake. But the professors had spoiled him. He slept with their daughters and wives. He turned lazy. He took the name Jagiello. He ran off to Paris and parked at the door of an immigrant-aid society. He milked the society as much as he could. He studied with charlatans who destroyed his technique. He fled to London and then landed in the United States, where he managed to get a green card. He married an heiress. The heiress dropped him after a month. But he’d become a Jagiello and he lived within the cracks of whatever aristocracy he could find.

  Milan pieced together an orchestra of gifted frauds like himself. But the sound he gave his orchestra was unique. It was a schizophrenic medley of Prague and the United States. He’d imposed his own madness on either country. Diana adored the music, but she wouldn’t sleep with Milan. She had no interest in his dark eyes. And Jagiello’s hands were dirty.

  He’d begun to shiver.

  “They won’t let me graduate. They won’t let me graduate.”

  He’d grown ugly in America. The maestro was losing his hair. His gums were turning black. She held him in her arms. He was like some fragile bird.

  “Talk to Dammler. Please.”

  Ivan Dammler was president of the Philharmonic. Dee had slept with him once, long before she’d discovered Caroll in Central Park. She could feel Dammler contemplating her daddy’s millions while he closed his eyes. But he had more than money on his mind. He’d confused Dee with some femme fatale or dominatrix. And Dee was neither one nor the other. She was her daddy’s girl, who collected lost boys like Milan and Isaac or Maria Montalbán.

  Milan wouldn’t stop crying.

  “The blinis will fatten you up,” she said. “Come on. I’ll reserve a table near the door and we’ll look at all the movie stars.”

  But he was beyond the comforts of the Russian Tea Room. She saw that in his dark eyes, which were like circles shutting out all the light. Milan had arrived at the end of his own imperial line. He was an American now, one more native son, without any kings in the closet.

  “I’ll kill myself, Diana.”

  She slapped his face. “Shut up.”

  “I can’t play for children all my life.”

  “Don’t I get you college towns?”

  “Children,” he said.

  Dee slapped him again. She undressed her Jagiello, held him in her arms, his scrotum like paper skin against her thigh. Perhaps she was a damn dominatrix. Because it soothed Milan to be without his clothes.

  “I’ll talk to Dammler. I promise.”

  And she put him to bed like the toy conductor he’d become. She wasn’t barren. She had a child. His name was Milan. She kissed his forehead and put out the light.

  13

  She wouldn’t wear a gown in the great hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She had no purple veins to hide. She wore a summer dress in March, her ankles bound up in Spanish leather, her breasts high against her throat.

  Her daddy wore a cummerbund and a proper coat. She could have been taken for his concubine. Because she was wicked around Papa Cassidy, clutching his arm, ignoring him, or stroking his ear. He flourished near his daughter. He’d preferred Diana’s company since she was a child.

  “Where’s the cop?” Papa asked.

  “You’ll have to ask Susan, my secretary. She knows his schedule.”

  “It’s a fine thing when a wife loses track of her husband.”

  “Stop scolding me. You couldn’t even remember my mother’s birthday.”

  “I remember what needs remembering. How’s Maria Montalbán?”

  “Good, Papa. He wants to marry me.”

  “With Caroll’s permission, I hope. But Cardinal Jim might not like it. He’s kind of old-fashioned. He won’t recite another wedding Mass.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t bother Jim. I’d bring you into church, Papa. You can recite the Mass.”

  “Baby, I’m not a priest.”

  “Papa, get off my back.”

  And she whirled away from her father, who seemed forlorn without Diana’s touch. But she was free of him, in some neutral country under the enormous ceiling. Men began to drink up that perfume of her skin. She had a glass of champagne. Diana hiccupped, and her breasts moved higher and higher, and she missed Caroll and thought of Maria’s rings. She hadn’t realized it was a charity ball for children. Alejo Tomás was here, chancellor of the City’s schools, with a host of his superintendents, including Maria Montalbán. He’d kept all his grace in this mad shuffle. H
e hadn’t sacrificed his high heels or the gold star in his ear. She felt a hand on her shoulder. It belonged to Ivan Dammler.

  “You’ve been avoiding me.”

  “Ivan, I could never do that. I was going to make an appointment with you at the Philharmonic.”

  “What’s the occasion? Ah, let me guess. It’s the Czech genius, Milan Jagiello.”

  “You could let him audition, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Audition for what? Assistant janitor? I wouldn’t lend my orchestra to the likes of him.”

  “You’ve never seen him conduct.”

  “You’re wrong. I’ve heard him and his home-relief society. It’s a fabulous kindergarten class. Beethoven and Mickey Mouse.”

  “That’s unfair,” she said.

  “I don’t have to be fair … sleep with me.”

  He had such a look of terror that Diana couldn’t laugh.

  “Sleep with me … and I’ll give your Czech a chance.”

  “Ivan, I’m not that terrific. And if there was ever something between us, we wouldn’t be bargaining like strangers. I’ll get that audition without you.”

  It was a lie, of course. Ivan could block whatever move she made at the Philharmonic. Her daddy would have to threaten the entire board of trustees. And Papa didn’t like Milan any better than Ivan Dammler did. So she’d have to seduce the trustees one by one, which she might have accomplished in her bachelor years; she no longer had the taste for it. She had to carry an orchestra on her back.

  She was bored by the men who gaped at her and was about to leave when Maria took her arm and started to dance with her in the middle of the floor. She didn’t resist. “It’s not salsa,” he said. “But I can do all the gringo trots.”

  “You’re a gringo yourself.”

  “Yes. That’s the cross every Newyorican has to bear. A child of two cultures.”

  “Poor Maria,” she said, but she held him tight in the great hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, near the mummy room, where all the Egyptian gods and goddesses lay. The band was never good at these charity balls, because no one was encouraged to dance. The musicians stood like grim dolls in evening clothes that could have been waiters’ pajamas. They must have worn the same pajamas from gig to gig. Milan Jagiello should have been the band leader. Then they could have had Czech tangos at the charity ball, a real Vienna waltz, and some salsa from Milan’s own dark days in Brazil, where he starved for a month with most of his orchestra, who had to sell their shoes and their shirts.