“But they might disappear no matter what Alejo did. It’s not the black and brown pols who’ve been complaining, Isaac. Only you.”
“Because they’re fat cats, Cardinal Jim.”
“I want you to apologize to Alejo Tomás.”
“I can’t.”
“Isaac, if you create bedlam in the public schools, it could catch fire. And I’ve my own schools to consider. We need a unified policy, not a police commissioner who goes on shotgun parties and makes war on the City’s schools.”
“We weren’t carrying shotguns, Jim.”
“You know what I mean,” the cardinal said. “I’ve defended you, Isaac. I’ve never interfered. Will you do it for the old vicar? Apologize.”
“All right,” Isaac muttered. “I’ll kiss him on both cheeks if that will make you happy.”
The cardinal laughed. “One cheek will do.”
And they marched off the terrace in their capes, the vicar of St. Patrick’s Cathedral and the invisible policeman, Isaac Sidel. The pols tried to waylay them and kiss the cardinal’s ring, but he thrust both hands into the pockets of his black silk coat and brought Isaac to the chancellor. Alejo Tomás was six feet tall. He’d been an amateur boxer and had a tiny spur on his nose. He gave up boxing at sixteen and found a new home in the political precincts of Manhattan and the Bronx. The Bronx machine had subsidized Alejo, paid for part of his tuition at Notre Dame, and he’d become a thug with a Ph.D. Isaac knew he was collecting kickbacks from certain contractors who built and maintained his schools, but that was how business got done in the land of New York, and Alejo was clever enough to cover his tracks. Isaac didn’t mind the thievery. It was the politicking with Rebecca Karp and the county clubhouses. He’d turned the schools into one more fiefdom of a rotten machine. A chancellor had to remove himself from the pols and argue his case for the kids. But Tomás was the opposite sort of man.
Alejo had been standing with a bunch of school concessioneers, those hawks who profited from his patronage. But they disbanded when they saw the cardinal coming. “Alejo,” the cardinal said. “I’ve brought an old friend. I think he’d like to have a few words with you.”
But the chancellor wasn’t in a conciliatory mood. “Next time, Isaac, I’ll have guards with automatics waiting for you. We’ll see who has more cojones. Don’t you ever walk into my schools again, or I’ll personally crack your skull.”
“Holy Mother. You can’t expect the man to apologize after a coronation like that.”
“I don’t want his apologies, Jim. He’s been busting my hump ever since I’ve gone to the Board of Ed. Fancies himself an educator, when he’s an illiterate prick.”
“Watch that tongue of yours,” the cardinal said, but Jim was enjoying himself. He loved the idea of a boxing match on the roof of the St. Moritz.
“Chancellor,” Isaac said. “It was wrong of me. I should have asked your blessing. But tell me, have you installed those computers in your kindergartens yet? Because if you have, I’d like to sign up for the class.”
He winked at Cardinal Jim and moved away from the chancellor. But the chancellor clutched Isaac’s arm. “I’m not finished with you, Sidel.”
“Let go of me, Alejo.”
“You want a vendetta, you’ll get a vendetta. Speak to Becky Karp. You’ll be a commissioner without much of a portfolio pretty soon. You’ve lost most of your marbles. Your friends have a habit of dying on you … remember Manfred Coen?”
Isaac swung at Alejo with his free arm. But the cardinal got in the way and caught the blow. He blanched for a moment and then smiled. But his teeth were clamped together.
“I’m sorry,” Isaac said. “Your Eminence, I …”
“It’s all right, son,” the cardinal said. “I was a bit of a boxer myself in the old days. Like Alejo. A bantamweight, would you believe it?”
His lips were still tight and gray flecks appeared on his mouth. Alejo had gone to fetch him a glass of water. And Isaac stood like a dummy. The entire ballroom had seen the police commissioner strike Cardinal O’Bannon in the chest.
12
He sat at a table reserved for Becky’s high commissioners. He wanted to run home in his cape and howl at the moon. But there was no moon that night. And his absence would only have angered the mayor, who sat across from Isaac and glowered at him while the governor spoke. The governor was a silly man. He stood on the podium and talked about some city of his dreams, where white and black children would build a dream future in Alejo Tomás’ schools.
“And I say to you,” the governor said, his handsome inert face leaning into the microphone, “I say to you that we will have a partnership where the color of a man or woman’s skin will count for nothing at all. I am committed to excellence, not a secret cabal of advantages. And when our school children of today forage in the next century, let them be hunters after the good, seekers of the just, not lazy, not selfish, not alone. We will give our chancellor whatever he desires to accomplish this mission.”
The pols clapped for five minutes. The governor touched his lips with a handkerchief. The machine was grooming him for president. He had a beautiful wife, a son at Dartmouth and a daughter at Yale, and he could carry a couple of ideas in his head. But he had no humor or real compassion or awareness of what would ever save the City. He could have been born inside a box. He’d been packaged well, and the pols wanted to be certain that he would be loved in Indiana and Idaho, that he didn’t have the stink of New York City about him.
He sat down next to the beautiful wife, hands reaching across the table to grip his sleeve for good luck. And then Cardinal Jim got out of his chair and climbed onto the podium. He coughed into his fist. He was still pale from Isaac’s blow. He put on his reading glasses, took his little speech out of his pocket, and uncrumpled the page. You could hear the electric pull of the paper. The cardinal wouldn’t begin. He stared down at all his parishioners and the pols.
“We’re greedy,” he said.
And people wondered if the sock in his chest had deranged him a little.
“We’re greedy.”
The cardinal grabbed the sides of the microphone stand. His hands were red. And under the wings of his cape he looked like some avenging angel who’d come to slaughter the governor’s guests. The worm purred in Isaac’s belly. And now Isaac knew he’d have a terrific time, despite his humiliation.
“I’m an old man,” the cardinal said, “and I don’t intend to leave a legacy of doom to the young ones of this town. I’m not a native, you know, but a Chicago boy, weaned in the wildlands, among the poorest of the poor. And a little crook until the brothers at St. Benedict’s beat the piss out of me so I could hear the music of my Christian soul. And I wonder, as I stand here, if all of us shouldn’t be whipped.”
There was a muttering, a kind of laughter, and then a silence fell upon the St. Moritz.
“It’s not your treasure I’m after. It’s your hearts. And that’s where we’ve all been greedy. Hiring a chancellor and shutting our eyes and thinking all the problems would go away. But our children are stuck on a battlefield, fighting the demons in themselves and the indifference all around them.” And the cardinal shut both his eyes, his ruddy face like a porcelain mask as all the color was mysteriously gone. “There’s the demon. Indifference. Our children aren’t in Chancellor Tomás’ schools. And so we sit here and eat and ask him to make miracles without offering Alejo our children. We cannot have schools that are charity wards.”
The cardinal opened his eyes. “I’m a bachelor. But I do have children in this big parlor … most of you are mine. And I’m claiming a vicar’s rights. I want you to lend yourselves to Alejo. Give him what he needs, not your fancy pocketbooks, but your sons and your daughters. Remember now, if the schools fall, the City will fall. You’ll have a population of broken children that none of us will be able to mend.” The cardinal stared into the little islands of faces at the St. Moritz. “Will you help your vicar now?”
He climbed down from th
e dais and there was a slow thunder of hands and the chanting of “Yes, yes, yes to the vicar. Yes.”
It was all flapdoodle. The pols wouldn’t deliver their sons and daughters. Alejo’s own children went to the cardinal’s parochial schools. But at least old Jim had shaken the sons of bitches. And Isaac dug into his tapioca pudding. The Ball was about to begin. The musicians had stood in back of the cardinal like silent crows, and now they tinkered with their instruments. Isaac got up from his table and wandered a bit. He was surprised to see Jerry DiAngelis, his wife, and father-in-law at another table. They sat by themselves. The pols were embarrassed, because they couldn’t do business with Jerry at the Governor’s Ball. But Jerry had paid for his tickets. He was more of a prince than most of the governor’s other guests. And Cardinal Jim knew that. He broke the bloody ice. He walked over to Jerry’s table, chatted with the melamed, and then asked Jerry’s wife to dance. And suddenly all the pols were saying hello. They were chickenhearted people who could only feel secure in a cardinal’s wake.
And Jim was the wily one. He would be on the front page of every single morning paper, dancing with DiAngelis’ wife. How could it hurt? It was gallant of the cardinal to escort a Mafia man’s wife on the penthouse floor of the St. Moritz. Why should she have to pay for Jerry’s sins?
Isaac waited until the pols shook hands with Jerry. And then he sat down between the melamed and the prince.
“Jerry, is that funeral clothes you’re wearing?”
“Why?” DiAngelis asked in a blue tuxedo that must have cost him a couple of thousand.
“Your bookkeeper is dead.”
“Crabbs? I thought you visited him with my brother.”
“I did. But I sent in a back-up after the visit.”
“One of your commandos, Isaac?”
“What’s the difference?”
“The commando could have killed him.”
The melamed covered Isaac’s hand and Jerry’s hand with his own. “This isn’t the place for philosophical discussions. We’re at a banquet. Smile. The cardinal is dancing with Jerry’s wife. How will it look to the world if we seem gloomy?”
“You’re right, Iz,” the commissioner said.
“We’ll mourn Crabbs tomorrow. Not tonight. Now get up, Isaac,” the melamed said. “You sat with us long enough.”
And Isaac shoved off in his cape. The cardinal had returned Eileen DiAngelis to Jerry’s table. Photographers covered him from every side. No one seemed to bother about Becky Karp while Jim was working the room. He broke from the photographers and sidled next to the PC.
“How was the speech, son?”
“Amazing,” Isaac said. “But did you mean it?”
“Every word.”
“If the middle class comes marching back, what will happen to the parochial schools?”
“We have more than enough, Isaac. We’re filled to the brim. Two-year waiting lists, I’m told. Part of the spill ought to go the chancellor.”
“It won’t,” Isaac said. “I’m sorry I punched you. It was—”
“It’s good for the circulation, a sock in the heart. I’m fine. But will you make your peace with Alejo?”
“It’s too late, Jim.”
“A pity,” the cardinal said. “Because I’ll have to back him on this. And you’re already a bit of a pariah. Watch your flanks, son. Or the sharks will bite your legs off, beginning with Becky Karp. She’s turned sour on her favorite Commish.”
And he was gone from Isaac, into some other territory of the ballroom, where he danced with a politician’s wife, while the rest of his flock, the people who loved him and feared him, glided out of his way.
Isaac felt a hand on his shoulder. He started to growl until he recognized the governor’s handsome, unmarked face, the teeth capped to perfection, the eyes with all the sympathy of a fish.
“Isaac, get rid of your Gestapo.”
“Gestapo, Governor?”
“Don’t play the virgin. I won’t tolerate a secret police.”
“Who’s been telling you bedtime stories, sir?”
“Never mind. I want assurances, Isaac. Can you promise me that you’re not harboring your own band of spies?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Would you like me to swear on the cardinal’s ring?”
“Keep Jim out of it. He already owns half the real estate in town. Isaac, I don’t want you to become an embarrassment. I’m considering a run for the presidency. You’re aware of that. And if some reporter should ever accuse me of funding a goddamn Gestapo, I’m out of the race.”
“I’m clean, Governor.”
“Sure,” the governor said, turning from Isaac. “Ivanhoes, isn’t that what you call them?”
“I wouldn’t know, Your Excellency.”
But the governor vanished from Isaac to shake whatever hands he could find. And Isaac was left in deep shit. If the governor, who had no inside sources of information, knew about the Ivanhoes, Isaac was lost. Who the hell had ratted on him? LeComte? But the cultural commissar would have had to reveal his own part in creating the Ivanhoes.
Isaac was pondering this when he noticed Schyler Knott. The president of the Christy Mathewson Club had come out of hiding to attend the Ball. The Bomber was with him, as his bodyguard. Harry Lieberman in a tuxedo that could have been a butcher’s coat. And Isaac still had the urge to tell him, Harry, you shouldn’t have jumped to the Mexican League after the war. You would have had a better chance with the Giants. But it was ancient history, an old wound that would never heal, neither for Isaac nor Harry.
“Hello, Schyler,” Isaac said, sounding as mournful as he could.
“You’re not funny,” Schyler said. “I trusted you and you betrayed us.”
“Me? I’m an honorable member of the club. I wouldn’t betray the memory of Mathewson and Mel Ott. My whole fucking life was baseball. All I ever wanted to be was a New York Giant.” A meanness crept into Isaac. “Harry was a Giant, but Harry jumped.”
“We’re not talking baseball. And Harry’s career is his own business. You brought thugs into our house.”
“Never,” Isaac said. “I never would.”
“I didn’t tell a soul about Maurie, Isaac, not a soul, except you … no one else could have known he was a member of the club. He always met with our board in secret session. Maurie didn’t want to compromise us.”
“And you think I did?”
“Yes.”
“And you, Schyler, are so fucking pure. We found Maurice’s boyfriend. The male nurse. He told us Maurie used the club as his private bordello.”
“Bordello? Would you have said that, Isaac, if the nurse was a woman and not a man? Where else did Maurie have to meet? The St. Moritz?”
“All right, if I’m such a bad ass, why the hell are you here?”
“I never miss the Manhattan Ball. The governor is a friend of mine.”
“You didn’t happen to utter the word ‘Ivanhoe’ to His Excellency, did you?”
“Isaac, I don’t remember meeting any Ivanhoes, unless you mean Tilly Ivanhoe, who pitched for the Reds in Nineteen seventeen. He’s in a sanitarium now … excuse me, I’d like to say hello to the governor.”
And Isaac was left with that rawness of another failed encounter. He looked around and spotted Sal Rubino, master builder and brains behind the rebellious Rubino captains. He’d led the fight against Jerry DiAngelis’ ascension to the Rubino throne. His uncles had been killed and Sal blamed Jerry DiAngelis. He shouldn’t have come to the Ball. But he was reckless, like both DiAngelis brothers. He was dancing with a lady. Isaac could only see her back. But the worm tore at him. Margaret Tolstoy was in Sal Rubino’s arms. She had a new protector now. She didn’t need the Commish. Her spine wiggled beneath her silk gown. Her laughter sounded like hot coal. Sal spun her around and her eyes met Isaacs for a moment. There was no sadness or sense of surprise. He could have been any guest at the Governor’s Ball.
Isaac retrie
ved his top hat and winter coat and abandoned the St. Moritz.
13
He drifted downtown like the lone wolf that he was. He could have stopped any police car and hitched a ride. But he felt like walking, a fool in his cape, with a top hat that was a hundred years old. People stared at him. A woman offered him a dime, thinking he was a beggar who’d come out to haunt the streets of Manhattan in carnival clothes. He took the dime, because it seemed much simpler than having to explain his circumstances. He, Isaac, who’d arrived at the St. Moritz as Mandrake the Magician, socked a cardinal and seen the love of his life in the arms of a Mafia man—not a prince like Jerry, but the president of a concrete company. Sal Rubino.
Isaac was already thinking how he could arrange the hit. It soothed him to imagine the whole scenario. He could steal a gun from the property clerk, put on his putty nose, catch the concrete maker in some coffee shop, pop him behind the ear, and walk out, one-two-three. Who would have ever dreamed it was the police commissioner? But he’d only complicate the civil war between the old Rubino captains and Jerry DiAngelis, and the melamed might get hurt. Still, it was delicious to think about.…
Isaac was taking off his tuxedo when the phone started to ring. He picked up the bloody instrument. “Hello.”
“You cocksucker.”
It was Becky Karp.
“My own prize man, and he runs out on me.”
“Had a headache,” Isaac said.
“You mean a hard-on. I caught you looking at Sal Rubino’s whore. Margaret Tolstoy. Isn’t that her name? She’s your new cookie. I figured there was another woman. And you fall for a cunt like that.”
“I went to school with her, Your Honor.”
“Don’t you ‘Your Honor’ me. We’re practically engaged.”
The Good Policeman (The Isaac Sidel Novels) Page 10