Maria's Girls (The Isaac Sidel Novels)

by Jerome Charyn

  He’d gone a little musty, but Delia dressed him in a tie from Bloomingdale’s. All she cared about was a bodyguard with a Bloomingdale label. It was her afternoon with Uncle Malik. The trials commissioner was on a short holiday from Police Plaza. And Caroll accompanied Delia to Malik’s condominium on Third Avenue. Malik lived in a glass tower overlooking Manhattan’s high-rise heart. He was descended from a line of scholars and grocers in Alexandria and Istanbul. His papa had arrived in America without a cent and managed to start a grocery store in some lost Turkish district near Bellevue. Little Malik studied like a devil. He earned a law degree while he slaved in his papa’s store. He’d never married. He had a wild-ness in him from all those years of labor when he couldn’t afford a wife. Now he didn’t want one. He’d undress Delia once or twice a week.

  Malik met Delia and her bodyguard outside his door.

  “Care for a drink?”

  “You’ll hold it against me,” Caroll said. “You’ll tattle to Internal Affairs.’’

  “Caroll,” Delia said, “don’t talk to Uncle Malik like that. Apologize.”

  “To him?” Caroll said. “The hangman? I’d rather die.”

  “I’m not your hangman, kid. I’m the trials commissioner, that’s all. I make my recommendations to the PC. But you shouldn’t slap school officials and get involved with shylocks.” Malik bowed in his silk robe. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t prejudice your case. Have a drink, kid. It will do you some good.”

  Caroll had to smile at the incongruity of it. The hanging judge had a part-time mistress who was in Caroll’s hands. It was like playing with a boa constrictor. But Caroll went inside. He had a whiskey. He saw that little sky of glass and stone from Malik’s tower windows. He preferred the treeline of Central Park. Malik disappeared into his bedroom with Delia St. John.

  Caroll had another whiskey, went downstairs, and hiked to Park Avenue. He was going to visit Dee, but he couldn’t get that picture of her and Maria Montalbán out of his head.

  He stood outside Diana’s building. The doorman gave him an embarrassed shrug. Caroll would always be a stranger here, the policeman who was Diana Cassidy’s husband-guest.

  He went around the corner to an English pub called Old Ben. The little beard of his tie fell into his whiskey glass. Bloomingdale’s, he muttered. He’d have to strangle that living dead man, Sal Rubino, for letting his soldiers mark up Dee. But somehow he still liked Sal. Caroll couldn’t decide whom to love and whom to hate. He belonged in that jungle of Central Park North.

  A man sat down next to him. Caroll laughed. It was Milan Jagiello, Diana’s protégé. His cuffs were as worn as Caroll’s. His dark eyes seemed to have dead zones in them.

  “I can’t go up to Deedee. The doctor won’t let me in. I’ll lose my orchestra. And my landlord is after me.”

  “Aint it a bitch,” Caroll said.

  “Deedee forgot to sign the checks. But you could persuade her, Mr. Caroll.”

  “Should I sock the landlord, should I whack him out?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “A contract. I could kill him.”

  “You’re crazy,” Milan said, running from the bar without a drink.

  And who the hell was Caroll? One more phantom who couldn’t even find his phantom self.

  Part Six

  23

  Isaac had had his Harlem nights. Not with whores. Not with jazz bands in the cellars of Lenox Avenue. Not with chitterlings and fried okra. Not with rent parties until four A.M. Not with exotic darktown balls. He’d go on a pilgrimage to Harlem whenever Joe Louis arrived from Detroit to fight at Madison Square Garden. Louis couldn’t stay at the Plaza or the Waldorf and the Pierre. The world champion had to check into a nigger hotel. Isaac would stand outside the Lenox Savoy in rain and snow to catch a glimpse of the Brown Bomber. He didn’t want an autograph or a touch of Joe’s hand. He wanted to see the Bomber in the window of his hotel.

  He remembered that face from the Movietone News. Joe, sleepy-eyed, coming out of his corner in baggy trunks. Where did all that fury come from? It wasn’t in the face. Joe seemed to turn inward while his body attacked, as if some crucial part of him had never entered the ring, and wouldn’t dream of hurting another man, particularly a white man. Joe was performing a brutal, distant dance, removed from his own feelings, removed from himself. It scared the shit out of Isaac, watching Joe, realizing that the only place in the world Joe Louis could punch a white man and not get punished was inside a boxing ring.

  The Brown Bomber never recovered from his bouts. It was like a sickness he had to bear. He boxed and boxed, but the sickness wouldn’t go away. He looked drugged in the ring. And when he could no longer box, he became a buffoon, a wrestler who put on a cape like Batman and choreographed his own matches. All the fury was gone. The Brown Bomber had retreated within himself. He owed money to the United States. The taxman wouldn’t leave him alone. He died like some kind of pauper with a championship belt.

  Isaac must have felt a little of Joe’s future when he waited outside the Lenox Savoy in all that snow. He missed those long winter nights. He’d never been fearful of that other Bomber at the Polo Grounds. Harry was a galloping horse. But Joe danced in his own killing ground at the Garden. All of Manhattan had become Isaac’s killing ground. He was the commissioner of death. And the commissioner had nowhere else to go.

  He had to find Sal and kill him all over again. He went to Sherwood Forest. He didn’t see Barbarossa or his white glove. He didn’t see Weiss. The old sergeant wasn’t behind his desk. He didn’t see Wilson and McSwain. His two wonderwomen weren’t in the auxiliary shack. He couldn’t recognize a single face. The rookies smiled at him. He was Grandpa Isaac, the absent Commish. He knocked on the captain’s door. He heard an unfamiliar voice. “Come in.”

  Another man was sitting in the captain’s chair. It was Maisley, one of Sweets’ shooflies from the fourteenth floor. He mocked Isaac.

  “Your man’s gone. Captain White’s on a month’s vacation. Sweets moved out your whole Monday Morning Club.”

  “As of when?”

  “This afternoon. Sweets can’t afford you, Isaac. You’re a lot of trouble.”

  “Where’s Barbarossa?”

  “Filing papers somewhere with his fancy glove. Sweets made him a clerk.”

  “And you’re Sweets’ new point man in Central Park.”

  “Me, Isaac? I’m the fucking heart of darkness. I swallow up old commissioners. Sweets doesn’t want you around.”

  “Ah, Mr. Maisley, I’m glad.”

  Isaac had to trust his own instinct. He picked up this substitute captain and hurled him out of the office. There were terrible forking lines in Isaac’s head. He dragged Maisley to the front door. None of the officers took Maisley’s side. No one was certain where Isaac would land in the fickle politics of the police.

  Isaac left Maisley under Sherwood Forest’s little green lamps. He’d used up all his strength. He limped out of the Park, coughing like a consumptive cat. He had spasms in both his legs. Sidel, the eighty-year-old-man. He was worthless. But he went looking for Joe. Barbarossa was the last “window” he had to the streets. Barbarossa was a magician with a white glove. The NYPD was one more camp in a whole series of enemy camps. And Barbarossa defined himself against each camp. Barbarossa had no real address. Barbarossa always lived near a ping-pong table. And so Isaac had to travel down to Schiller’s, a ping-pong club on Columbus, where Manfred Coen used to play. Coen had died at the far table in one of Isaac’s little wars. The Pink Commish dreaded going there. He didn’t like to reenact his own history. But then he remembered that he had no history.

  He climbed down the basement steps of Schiller’s club. He heard the constant clack of balls and the buzz of kibitzers and ping-pong freaks. Schiller’s was the last ping-pong club left in Manhattan. The landlords had driven out all the other clubs, turned them into supermarkets and basement boutiques. But Schiller had a thirty-year lease and killer lawyers among his clientele. Th
e killer lawyers would go to court to protect the ping-pong tables and the integrity of the lease. They would have been stranded without Schiller’s.

  Isaac walked into that archaic world. The buzzing music stopped. The freaks hadn’t forgotten Isaac the Brave. He was the curse of Schiller’s club. Schiller stood inside the spectators’ gallery and stared at Isaac with his sad vegetarian’s eyes. He was too polite to ban Isaac from the club. But he still mourned Coen after eight years. Coen had been the resident angel of the club. Nobody could replace him, not even Vietnam Joe, who often slept in Schiller’s rear closet and changing room.

  Isaac saw Joe at Manfred’s table. The table no longer had a net. Joe used it as his office. It was cluttered with file cards and slips of paper and bottles of ink. Barbarossa conducted all his business at the table. He would help Schiller out with the rent. He would only play around midnight, when most of the “tourists” were gone. He wasn’t half as good as Coen. But he never tried to replace Coen at the club. He was a cop with outside interests. Ping-pong relaxed him, but it wasn’t his religion.

  Isaac stopped at the table. Joe signaled to Schiller. Schiller raised his head, and the kibitzing resumed. And Isaac kept staring at the glove, which seemed to have its own existence, like a five-fingered animal.

  “You have a lot of balls coming here,” Barbarossa said.

  “I didn’t kill Coen.”

  “Schiller hates your guts.”

  “I didn’t kill Coen.”

  “If you say it often enough, Isaac, you’ll begin to believe it.”

  “I’m sorry about Sweets. He shouldn’t have pulled you out of the Forest.”

  “That’s all right,” Barbarossa said. “I’m a clerk at the Academy. There’s a ping-pong table in the rec room.”

  “Don’t take it to heart,” Isaac said. “Sweets is punishing me. He closed down the Monday Morning Club.”

  “He wasn’t punishing you, Isaac. He’s protecting your ass.”

  “I don’t need his protection,” Isaac said.

  “You do. You’re a walking catastrophe. Maria knew every one of our moves. You ran a fucking circus. You shouldn’t have bothered with Maria. Maria wasn’t big enough. He was running his schools the only way he could.”

  “Then why did you join my club?”

  “Did I have a choice? You would have bounced me to the end of the world.”

  “And you were dealing dope for Maria while you worked for me.”

  “I did him a few small favors. But I never ratted you out.”

  “Who killed Maria?”

  “I did.”

  Isaac clutched the table to keep from falling. “You’re Sal Rubino’s man.”

  “No, Isaac. You have it wrong. I had to hurt the little fuck. He owed me money. And he wanted me out of the way.”

  “You’ve been feuding with Maria since Vietnam.”

  “It had nothing to do with Nam. I pinched a few dealers for Maria. He decided not to pay. He sent a couple of Sal’s soldiers after me. I had to whack them in the head.”

  “And you glocked Maria near the Park Avenue trestle to make it look like it was the same hitter who glocked me.”

  He didn’t want to talk about White, he didn’t want to talk about White. He was the custodian of his own little church, the church of Sheriff Street, under the Williamsburg Bridge.

  “Isaac, I had to give Sweets’ bloodhounds something to play with … and I didn’t hit Maria for nothing. I got big dollars from Papa Cassidy. He wanted Maria dead. Everybody did. Maria was trying to reform Delia St. John, take her off the street and out of Papa’s arms. There was too much of the teacher in him. Or maybe he wanted Delia to carry his private union card. He was always having crazy ideas, Isaac. Just like you.”

  “You left an awful lot of widows,” Isaac said.

  “The daughters, you mean. Maria’s girls.”

  “Some of them might claw your eyes out.”

  “I’ll take my chances,” Barbarossa said. “But you ought to go back to your hospital room, Isaac. It’s much safer there. Papa thinks you and Caroll are conspiring to rob him of Delia. He’d like to marry her. Imagine. He’s offering big dollars for your scalp.”

  “Why don’t you take his money, Joe?”

  “I might.”

  Isaac started to cough. The table whirled in front of his head. Barbarossa had to find him a chair.

  “I could never sock a sick man.”

  “I’ll recover,” Isaac said.

  “You’re lost without Coen. Coen made you human.”

  “Coen was before your time.”

  “But I inherited his ping-pong table,” Barbarossa said. “And Coen would have saved you. Caroll can’t. He has matrimonial problems. He likes to suck on the bottle.”

  “How did you pop Maria?”

  “What’s the difference, Isaac?”

  “I want to know. Did you arrange a meet with him at the trestle?”

  “Yeah, he brought two cowboys, two of Rubino’s men. He thought he’d make a funeral party. But I slapped the cowboys and sent them home.”

  “And did Maria try to run?”

  “No. The ballsy little bastard looked right into my eyes.”

  Isaac got up off the chair. “Who are you protecting, Joe?”

  Barbarossa took off his glove. His fingers were as pale as a swan’s belly. The hand had no life without the glove. It looked amputated to Isaac.

  “You wouldn’t have killed Maria,” Isaac said. “Maria was your partner in crime. And you’re not dumb enough to hit a man for Papa Cassidy. He’s a prick. And he could sing to a hundred different agencies. What happened at the trestle?”

  “I told you.”

  Isaac snatched the glove. Joe had a wounded look on his face. Then he smiled.

  “What happened?”

  “Maria was getting careless.”

  “You were thick with him, weren’t you? Since Vietnam.”

  “He was telling people how he worked for the Feds, how he could kill any clown and get away with it.”

  “Yeah,” Isaac said. “He was a made man.”

  “He was stealing a little too much, talking to his girls, leaving a long trail from Rubino to the Justice Department, and Sal got scared, because people might start calling him an FBI rat.”

  “He is a rat. And he shouldn’t be alive.”

  “But he is alive, Isaac. And he caught Maria and me at one of Maria’s cribs.”

  “Who was with Sal?”

  “Two guys to carry the wheelchair … and Nose.”

  “Jerry’s baby brother?”

  “He’s five years older than Jerry.”

  “He’s still his baby brother.”

  “I didn’t beg for my life. But they tied me up and took Maria.”

  “And told you not to tell.”

  “I didn’t need any instructions, Isaac. Nose belongs to the Bureau. And he hits people for Sal.”

  “The man has no mind. He’s an imbecile.”

  “Imbecile, Isaac? He’s very sweet with a gun.”

  “And now you’ve retired to your ping-pong table.”

  “Find me a better place.”

  “That’s not like you, Joe. You aren’t a quitter … you’re registered with LeComte. That’s why Nose didn’t pop you. And LeComte is pulling you out of the picture.”

  “You’re all alone, Isaac.”

  “And what if I am?”

  He returned the glove to Joe. He passed Schiller’s gallery of kibitzers and freaks. They looked away from the commissioner of death, who coughed and coughed on that dark climb up the stairs and didn’t stop coughing until he made the street.

  24

  He needed a magic rabbi. A cardinal wouldn’t do. Jim could rattle skulls in a graveyard, and he could maneuver an army of churchmen, but he didn’t have much practice in killing people. And so Isaac visited the melamed, Isadore Wasser, at the family fortress on Cleveland Place. The last captains Jerry had were ensconced inside the fortress with
Jerry’s wife Eileen and the melamed, who’d gone senile after a stroke. Sal’s crews had tried to bomb the place. They pissed on Jerry’s stairs. They left bottles of excrement, but the melamed still peeked outside his window. And Isaac was allowed upstairs.

  Eileen looked haggard. That subtile beauty had gone to sleep in her. She lived in some nebulous country between a widow and a wife. Jerry couldn’t call. LeComte had tapped the lines. Jerry’s people would leave coded messages for her, but the codes were confusing, and she couldn’t be sure her husband was alive from one day to the next.

  The Rubinos would get on the wire and cackle at Eileen, swear that Jerry was a corpse, and she grew frightened of the phone. Her own captains had to shop for Eileen and run to the bank with Mossbergs under their coats. And they still had casualties. It was a maddening war.

  Isaac hugged Eileen. “I saw Jerry. Last week.”

  “Last week? That’s like a million moons ago.”

  She fell into Isaac and cried against his chest.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll talk to the melamed. He’ll help us break the Rubinos.”

  “Isaac, he can’t remember when to pee. You’ll upset him. His mind is gone.”

  “Ah, then I’ll kiss him for old time’s sake.”

  He entered the melamed’s room. Izzy Wasser wasn’t lying under any quilt. He stood near the window, smoking a cigarette. He was dressed like a merchant prince, as if a single word from Isaac might call him into action. His forehead was ruffled. That was the only sign of disturbance Isaac saw.