The Good Policeman (The Isaac Sidel Novels)

by Jerome Charyn

“Becky, I—”

  “Shut up. What kind of moron hits a cardinal? Isaac, do you want to sink my whole administration?”

  “It was an accident,” Isaac muttered. “I was trying to hit your chancellor.”

  “That’s brilliant,” Rebecca said. “A war between the Puerto Ricans and the Jews. The papers would love that. And Alejo would tear your kidneys. He was a boxer. I thought you had some sense. And who gave you permission to leave the table? A fight broke out after you were gone. Between Rubino and Jerry DiAngelis.”

  “That figures.”

  “Then why weren’t you there to prevent it, Isaac? Isn’t that what I pay you for?”

  “Rebecca, I’m not a referee. What was the fight about?”

  “That bitch. Margaret Tolstoy. That’s how I learned who she was. Jerry insulted her. And Sal started climbing on Jerry’s back.”

  “And did your boxer stop the fight?”

  “No. It was Jim. The cardinal got between the warring parties and they were both ashamed to fuck with the Powerhouse. But Jim gets all the publicity and I can’t even get laid, because my police commissioner is in love with Sal Rubino’s mistress.”

  “We were classmates,” Isaac said. “Margaret and …”

  But the mayor had hung up on Isaac. She’d fume and call again. One phone call wasn’t enough for Rebecca. He undipped his bow tie and toyed with the shirt studs. He took off his shoes and socks. The phone rang and Isaac considered not answering it, but Her Honor would ring the whole bloody night. He could hear an odd chirp on the wire.

  “Who is it?” he growled.

  “Anastasia. Can I come up?”

  Isaac received her in his robe like some aristocrat. She had a little mouse over one eye.

  “Did Sal hit you?”

  “It’s nothing,” she said.

  “I’ll make him wish he’d never heard of the Manhattan Ball.”

  “It’s nothing.”

  She let her coat drop to the floor, and she stood in her silk gown, with a curious glow in Isaac’s darkened rooms, his bear cave on Rivington Street. She began to shiver.

  “You’re cold,” he muttered. “I’ll find you a sweater.”

  “No. I’d like something to drink.”

  Isaac searched his cabinets and discovered a pear brandy from Poland. His worm didn’t take to whiskey, and Isaac didn’t keep much alcohol in the house. But he poured a glass for Margaret and himself.

  “Santé,” she said, touching Isaac’s glass with her own.

  “You must have been to Paris. My dad lives there. He’s a painter. Does portraits of rich Americans. He wanted to be the next Cézanne.”

  “Yes, I’ve been to Paris. And Brussels. And Amsterdam.”

  “Before you were Margaret Tolstoy.”

  She swallowed her brandy. “I wanted to see you tonight.”

  “For old times’ sake. Isn’t that it? One school chum to another.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of old times. I risked my ass to come here, Isaac. Sal didn’t want me to leave him.”

  “Is that how you got your swollen eye?”

  “No. It happened at the St. Moritz. Sal didn’t think I should have gone over to Jerry’s table. But I like the Hebrew teacher. Isadore was always nice to me.”

  “Sweetheart, did you know that your husband is dead?”

  She nibbled on the rim of her glass. “What husband?”

  “Stop it, Margaret. This isn’t a fucking Chekhov play. The accountant. Crabbs. He was shot in the ear by someone who got awful close to him.”

  “Someone like me. Isn’t that what you’re saying?”

  “Yes. For starters. You tell me the Nose is trying to kill you. Some mother shows up outside my window with a Mafia shotgun aimed at your head. I took you to a safe house, Margaret. I left you with my own people. And you run away.”

  “They were getting pretty familiar. I went to pee and one of them comes into the toilet and starts a conversation.”

  “Who was it?”

  “I didn’t take the time to ask. I got out of there.”

  “Well, what did he look like?”

  “It was dark, Isaac. He was wearing a holster. I don’t know …”

  “And you ran to Sal Rubino.”

  “I didn’t have much of a choice. Should I have gone to the FBI? Sal was fond of me.”

  “I know. He took you dancing. He brought you to the Governor’s Ball so DiAngelis could eat his heart out.”

  “I asked him to take me,” Margaret said. “I’d never been to a ball like that.”

  “I could have taken you.”

  “Yes, but you weren’t around.” And the Roumanian princess started to laugh.

  “What’s so funny?”

  She cupped a hand over her mouth to contain the laughter. “Your tux,” she said.

  “It wasn’t supposed to be comical.”

  “But I adored it. That’s why I’m here. My own sweet Isaac.”

  “I’m not all that sweet,” Isaac said. He grabbed Margaret’s wrists. “There’s too much fucking amnesia. Where were you, Margaret, before you married the accountant? And who were you?”

  “You’re hurting me,” she said.

  And Isaac was miserable in his own policeman’s heart. He couldn’t cure himself of Anastasia. He was attached to some bloody hook that brought him home to samovars and black tea. But if she did have a derringer in her handbag, he wouldn’t have sent her away. His head bent a trifle. He could feel her nostrils and the heat of her mouth. And finally, after thirty-seven years or so, they kissed. It felt strange, as if Isaac were watching himself in a two-way mirror. Was he kissing Margaret, or the ghost of a little girl? The gown slipped from her shoulders. And Isaac was afraid. She led him by the hand, and he found himself in his own bedroom with Margaret Tolstoy.

  It was more like peace than any particular passion. He was grounded in the princess. He had no desire to leave his bed. He came twice, like some big lucky bear. And all the while he watched her face. Her almond eyes turned another color. They went green under the weight of Isaac. Her mouth tasted like tea. No other woman had held him the way Anastasia did. She touched the wool on his chest, one arm circling his back, as if he were an enormous baby.

  He shut his eyes to see her better, to imagine her next to him, when he heard a little rustling noise, like an engine that could breathe. Anastasia was already in her clothes. Isaac stared at the clock on his night stand. It was a minute to five. And Isaac’s windows were dark as some deep well.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To Sal’s place,” she said. “I promised him I wouldn’t spend the whole night.”

  “So he lent you to me. You struck a bargain with Sal Rubino.”

  “Isaac, it was the only way I could come.”

  “What if I kept you with me like a fucking prisoner?”

  “He’d send out his crew to knock on your door.”

  “I could have two riot squads here in ten minutes, with bulletproof vests. They’d bump Sal home to his cement company.”

  “Isaac, I gave him my word.”

  “Margaret, live with me. I mean it. We already lost thirty-seven years.”

  “I can’t,” she said.

  “I don’t have another thirty-seven years to wait. I’m already losing my teeth. I had a hernia operation. I get spots in front of my eyes. I don’t remember half the names of my deputies. And I have a worm in my gut that’s eating me alive.”

  “You’re still a boy,” she said, smiling at Isaac. She bent over to kiss him between the eyes, and he was too forlorn to handcuff Margaret to his bed.

  She floated away from Isaac. The door clicked. And he knew he’d dream of samovars, even while he was awake.

  Part Three

  14

  Ismail, that’s what he called himself. He was a cipher at the Syrian mission to the U.N. A minor-league clerk who stood five feet tall. Isaac pictured his office in a basement somewhere. But the little clerk read most of Syria’s tra
ffic. Isaac never asked Ismail to compromise himself, to produce documents, or betray his country. He’d met the little man at a party. And it was curious that a clerk at the Syrian mission should have acquired a passion for baseball. Ismail had collected baseball cards, as Isaac had done. He knew batting averages. He was qualified to join the Christy Mathewson Club, but the Syrians would never have allowed it. He’d unearthed a baseball book when he was a boy in Damascus, and something about the uniforms, the caps, and the wallowing knickers had compelled him for life.

  He was lonely in America, and he couldn’t relate to the modern teams, because they didn’t wear the knickers he recalled from his book. And so he held to his boyhood heroes. He had no wife. His only brother had died in Damascus. He scribbled poetry and helped Isaac whenever he could. The PC cultivated Ismail as an informant and a friend. They’d have lunch in Chinatown, at little restaurants where the cooks, the owners, and the waiters guarded Isaac’s privacy. The Syrian was always grateful. They’d talk about their card collections, how much each card might be worth. Ismail had cards that went back to 1910. He was a much more serious collector than Isaac could ever be. The cards were Ismail’s America. His Ty Cobb was worth thousands of dollars. But he’d never part with his collection.

  They only discussed business after the meal.

  The little man had been able to piece Margaret Tolstoy’s life together. He must have gone to some Russian source, but Isaac never asked where Ismail got his information. He never carried documents. He wove whatever story he had in his head.

  “Roumanian,’ Ismail said. “Couldn’t find her birthday.”

  “It’s not important, Ismail. She’s about my age. But was she born Margaret Tolstoy?”

  The Syrian smiled. “Isaac, does Tolstoy sound Roumanian to you? Magda is her name. Magda Antonescu, I think. She was an orphan. But she could have come from rich people. She was living in Paris by Nineteen forty. And she arrived in America around Nineteen forty-three. Without any parents.”

  “Was she Jewish?” Isaac asked.

  “No. There isn’t any evidence of that.”

  “But why come here then? Roumania fought on the Nazi side. Their soldiers occupied Odessa, didn’t they? She would have been safe in Paris.”

  “Perhaps. But she arrived with a group of Roumanian children. They were all parceled out to foster families. Some were lucky, others were not. Magda couldn’t seem to find a permanent home. She had a succession of uncles and aunts. She might have been stealing the family silver, who knows?”

  “But I met her during the war,” Isaac said. “And the people she was with were very refined. They had a samovar.”

  Ismail laughed at his friend. “If a samovar was a mark of refinement, Isaac, you’d have a million aristocrats in Manhattan alone.”

  “I don’t mean that,” Isaac protested. “It was how she behaved. She knew French.”

  “Naturally.”

  “It was more than the French, Ismail. She was different. The teachers loved her. We all did. And then she vanished.”

  “Vanished? No. She returned to Bucharest … after the war. Had a long-lost uncle who suddenly claimed her.”

  “King Carol?”

  “Not a king, Isaac. Ferdinand Antonescu. Some financier. Then it all gets a bit cloudy. She was a ballet dancer, an actress. And Uncle Ferdinand dabbled in the black market. He was arrested and shot. The niece fell into disgrace. Lived like a beggar, hand to mouth. She emerges again, the mistress of a Roumanian general. It’s all caviar and champagne. The Russians took notice of her. And she’s sent to a Soviet kindergarten class.”

  “Kindergarten?” Isaac mumbled. Margaret’s journeys had begun to rattle his head.

  “A school for spies. Nothing special. It was strictly low grade. Her masters never really trusted her. She’d been to America. The FBI could have suborned Magda Antonescu.”

  “She was in junior high, for Christ’s sake. Thirteen, fourteen at the most.”

  “It’s been done before.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Then call it speculation. A theory, Isaac, a hunch. But she graduates from kindergarten. She’s a swallow now. You know what a swallow is.”

  “Yes, Ismail,” Isaac muttered. “A whore.”

  “Her masters provide her with all the documentation she could ever need. She’d lived in America. So the Russkies returned Magda to her ‘native ground.’ She poses as a Roumanian refugee, which was near enough to the truth. She has six or seven aliases. And she makes the rounds. Seduces men in Washington, San Francisco, Los Angeles … minor diplomats, soldiers, sailors, scientists. I told you. They didn’t trust Magda. She brought them little morsels of information, enough to keep her on the payroll. But she was too striking a woman not to be noticed, even if her handlers marched her from place to place. She had a dozen good years. Then the FBI caught on to the mysterious Magda.”

  “I thought you said they’d recruited her when she was thirteen.”

  “Just a theory of mine, Isaac. Nothing more. But now the fun begins. The Bureau doesn’t arrest Magda. And the Russians aren’t really concerned that she’s been unmasked. She knows very little about their operations. They’d provide her with some nest where they could photograph Magda and her ‘client’ in compromising positions, so they could blackmail the poor bastard, or frighten him to death. And now the Bureau decides to use Magda as an informant. The Russians don’t even object. They offer her to the FBI as an ‘Easter egg’—a very small gift. But on one condition. That the Bureau doesn’t set her up in the international market. She can only go after American game. That’s perfect for the Bureau. Magda ‘dies.’ And enter Margaret Tolstoy.”

  “And who’s her handler?”

  Ismail drank a cup of green tea.

  “Who’s her handler?”

  “Le Comte, of course.”

  Isaac slapped his forehead. “God, I’m dumb. Jerry keeps wiggling out of Le Comte’s hands. He can’t make an indictment stick. Juries have a habit of falling in love with Jerry DiAngelis. So LeComte tosses Margaret Tolstoy into the stew. She shacks up with Jerry’s bookkeeper. Sal Rubino is crazy about her. Margaret is like a combat zone. She heats up the civil war. And then, as icing on the cake, she shows up at the Christy Mathewson Club, and I’m dragged into the plot … compromised before I even say hello to Margaret.”

  “She’s a beauty, our Margaret,” the little man said. “Fifty, and still going strong. Remember, Isaac, Count Dracula was a Roumanian man. And she’s Dracula’s Daughter. That’s what they call her in certain code rooms. She sucks the blood out of the men in her life. I’d be careful around her. She might still be free-lancing for some of her old masters. Don’t give too much of yourself away.”

  Already introduced her to the Ivanhoes, Isaac muttered to himself. He was dying for a cappuccino, not twig tea. He took a baseball card out of his pocket, wrapped in cellophane. It was Goose Goslin, 1921.

  Ismail held the card with trembling hands. “Isaac, I couldn’t take it. Not in-good conscience. It would cripple your own collection.”

  “Kiddo, you deserve the card.”

  Isaac got up to pay the bill. It was always a difficult song and dance. The PC was an honored guest, the lord high commissioner. And Isaac would have to answer that the meal itself was an honor, and that the lord high commissioner had to pay for that honor like any other man. The chef himself would come out of the kitchen and scribble signs on a blank white pad. And with such meticulous care, a meal for two might cost Isaac nine dollars and seventy cents.

  Ismail went to the toilet and Isaac loped across town to the shirt factory. Something nagged at him, more than Margaret Tolstoy. Ismail seemed to have too much information about Dracula’s Daughter. He couldn’t have been a common cipher at the Syrian mission. And what the hell was a kid from Damascus doing with baseball cards? Isaac seemed surrounded by magicians.

  He entered the factory. The Afrikaner was there to greet him.

  “Burt, you lie
d. You said you didn’t see Margaret at the factory. But you followed her into the toilet, didn’t you?”

  “Yes I did.”

  “What the hell for?”

  “I wanted to ask her some bloody questions, and the woman was avoiding me. Isaac, I didn’t peek at her underpants. That’s not my game. Jesus, you know that.”

  “Well, we have to move. Because the lady works for LeComte, and she might have a lot more clients than that.”

  “You’re a bloody mind reader. Because I was having the same thoughts.”

  “I’ll expect you to be packed in twenty minutes.”

  “But we have a whole dormitory of cots. We have bedding, Isaac. A hundred pillows.”

  “Forget the dormitory. Take all the other gear.”

  “And what’s our new address?”

  “We don’t have one. It’s too risky to have a permanent home. The governor’s on to me. Open the safe, Burt. Divvy up whatever’s inside. And then wait for me in that white hotel.”

  “Where the bookkeeper is lying with a bullet in his brain?”

  “I’d be willing to swear that the body’s been removed. And not by the Catskill police. I think our lads will be okay … for a little while. I’ll count on your judgement, Burt. If it doesn’t smell right, lease another hotel. The mountains are full of them.”

  “But I’ll be arriving with an army, Isaac. Someone’s bound to spot us.”

  “Then you’ll have to split up. And when you call me, Burt, say you’re Friar Tuck.”

  “Won’t that sound conspicuous to some little secretary?”

  “No. She’ll think you’re a monk.”

  He hadn’t worn his paging device, because Isaac didn’t want to be at the mercy of Rebecca Karp. But when he got to headquarters, it wasn’t the mayor who was dogging him. Sweets stood outside Isaac’s office with all the gloom of a disinherited man.

  “I’ve been paging you for an hour.”

  “I had urgent business,” Isaac said.

  “I don’t give a damn. You’re our fucking chief. And you owe us your blood twenty-four hours a day.”