“It means nothing. He was retarded, Sweets. I want those vigilantes investigated. Bring in a captain from Intelligence if you have to.”
“Isaac, baby, don’t you remember? You dismantled half the Division. You had your Ivanhoes. I’m not putting Intelligence on this case.”
“Sweets.”
“What? Should I spring you for twenty-four hours and have you head up the investigation? Isaac, it’s Indian country. What are you going to do with all the rubble? You’ll be sifting for evidence half your life. You have your own problems. Concentrate on the Three Sisters. They’re worse than any vigilantes from the South Bronx.”
But Isaac wasn’t satisfied. He called Sharkey, the Bronx DA.
“You piece of shit, couldn’t you forget about the boy?”
“Darling, it was your counselor who dug him out of the anthill. Maurie embarrassed us. Telling my lads it was a false arrest. So do us a favor and go fuck yourself.”
Isaac arrived in court with a dark blue beard. His skin was mottled. He could have walked through a firestorm. He began eating his own knuckles during the prosecution’s little parade of witnesses. His fingers bled. He woke out of his black sleep when McCall of Internal Affairs was put on the stand.
Isaac had picked him for the job. He knew McCall would never use IAD to seek revenge. McCall didn’t like the game of politics.
It was Trish Van Loon who examined him. Neither the spectators nor the journalists nor the sketch artists could stop looking at her long legs.
“Can you tell the jury, Chief McCall, why you started investigating your own police commissioner? Isn’t it a rare occurrence?”
“It certainly is,” McCall said.
“Did someone drop a dime on the defendant, snitch on Isaac Sidel?”
“Objection!” Maurie said. “The prosecutor is leading her witness by the tail. I don’t like the word ‘snitch.’”
“Overruled,” the judge said. “I’ll allow it. But if you don’t mind, Ms. Van Loon, could you be a little less colorful in your remarks … as a personal favor to the court?”
“Yes, Your Honor. Chief McCall, can you tell us who first brought your attention to Mr. Sidel’s possible misdeeds?”
“Several officers from the Department. They were on surveillance. And they kept seeing the commissioner—I mean, Mr. Sidel—in the company of Jerry DiAngelis and his father-in-law, Izzy Wasser, also known as the melamed.”
“Objection!” Maurie said. “Being seen in another man’s company is still not a crime in the State of New York.”
“Overruled,” the fat man said. “Continue, please.”
“And there were other allegations. That Mr. Sidel had sidestepped the Intelligence Division to start his own intelligence team.”
“And did this intelligence team have a name?”
“Yes. The Ivanhoes.”
“And a chief?”
“Yes. A man called Bortelsman, but I could never find him.”
“And what use did Mr. Sidel make of his Ivanhoe Division?”
“It’s hard to say. But there have been allegations that the Ivanhoes interfered in Jerry DiAngelis’ war against Sal Rubino and the old Rubino captains.”
“Interfered? On whose side?”
“Jerry’s.”
“Your witness, counselor,” Trish said, and returned to the prosecution table.
Maurie wasn’t Trish Van Loon. He didn’t have the same lilt to his voice or Trish’s long legs. His nose was running, and he had to keep a handkerchief in his fist.
“Chief McCall, in all your surveillance of Isaac Sidel, did you uncover one single crime that he had committed?”
“No.”
“We’ve heard a lot about Ivanhoes, but did you ever see one?”
“No.”
“Talk to one?”
“No.”
“Thank you, Chief McCall.”
The court broke for lunch. Isaac had some pickles and pastrami sandwiches with Maurice in one of the conference rooms. Maurie had no appetite. Isaac devoured two sandwiches with his dark blue face, while Maurie brooded over a pickle.
“Burtons next. He’ll kill us.”
“I’m not so sure,” Isaac said.
“How can we deny the existence of Ivanhoes with Burton right there?”
“Eat,” Isaac said.
Burt looked more like a convict than a witness for the prosecution. The Three Sisters had been hiding him in some hotel. His suit was as shabby as Isaac’s. His mouth seemed filled with white paste. Ah, Burt, Isaac muttered to himself. And this time Susan Sodaman led him through her little circus. He talked about his days as a homicide captain in Capetown, and his flight from South Africa for having murdered a man. He was already a fulsome character. Even the bisons eyed him with disgust.
“Now tell us what you did for Isaac Sidel?”
“I was head of the Secret Branch.”
“Secret Branch?”
“Yes, mum. The Ivanhoes.”
“Ah, the Ivanhoes. The Ivanhoes.”
And Susan Sodaman brought him through the dance of what the Ivanhoes did.
“Well, mum, strictly speaking, we sort of watched over the world. In New York, of course. We never traveled. If the Saudis were up to some trick, we would defuse it.”
“Like a counterintelligence team.”
“I would say so. Yes.”
“Did you ever kill a man?”
“While I was with Isaac? No.”
“Would you, Mr. Bortelsman, if Isaac had asked?”
“Objection!” Maurie said.
“Sustained.”
“Bitch,” Maurie muttered to Isaac. “She can’t get away with crap like that.”
“Calm yourself. She’s being rather gentle with Burt.”
“’Course she is. He’s her fucking witness.”
“And what was your last assignment for Mr. Sidel?” Susan Sodaman asked.
“To destabilize Sal Rubino. And we would have if the plug hadn’t been pulled.”
Susan Sodaman smiled as she passed the defense table.
Isaac had to clutch Maurie’s pants. “Go slowly with him, counselor.”
“What do you mean? I’ll break his back.”
“Burt’s been signaling to me while he was on the stand.”
“Signaling?”
“With his ears. It’s a gimmick we adopted as Ivanhoes. He wants to help. Lead him a little, Maurie. Slow. Very slow. Ask him how he was paid.”
And Maurie approached the witness box. “Mr. Bortelsman, would you tell the court what kind of salary you had as an Ivanhoe? How were you paid?”
“In dollars,” Burt said.
“Without a receipt?”
“Naturally. We were the Secret Branch.”
“And who paid you?”
“The boss.”
“Can you identify him, please? Is he in this courtroom?”
“Yes. He’s sitting at your table. Mr. Sidel.”
“And he lugged cash around once a week like some Santa Claus.”
“Yes. He was our Father Christmas. But he didn’t exactly lug the cash. He put it in our strongbox. And we would take whatever we needed.”
“You’d dip into the pot, just like that.”
“It was informal. Very informal.”
“And you had no one to keep the books.”
“Wouldn’t make much sense to have a bookkeeper in our Branch. There was never any paperwork, you see.”
“How many Ivanhoes did you have?”
“From five to fifteen. Depending on the cash flow.”
“And where are they now?”
“Couldn’t say, counselor. They’ve kind of scattered … like the Branch itself.”
“And so you’re the last of the Ivanhoes.”
“Yes.”
“And do you have any proof at all that the other Ivanhoes existed?”
“Not exactly.”
“You did have an office.”
“Yes. But we were moving
all the time.”
“And if I asked you for an address?”
“Wouldn’t do much good. We’d strip a place, pick it clean, every time we moved.”
“So there wouldn’t be any evidence of these particular domiciles.”
“None at all.”
“But you did mention a strongbox.”
“I dismantled it and threw the pieces into the Hudson River.”
“And so what you’re really saying, Mr. Bortelsman, is that you have no proof of the Ivanhoes other than your very own person.”
“Objection!” Selma Beard said. “Your Honor, Mr. Goodstein is putting words into the witness’s mouth.”
“Sustained.”
“All right,” Maurie said. “All right. Mr. Bortelsman, may I call you Burt?”
“Yes. Certainly, sir.”
“Can you give me one reason why I should believe you that the Ivanhoes ever existed at all?”
Now it was up to the Nose. He sweated in the witness box. His brother and sister-in-law and the melamed were in the audience. He was Michaelson’s number one rat. The court artists sketched his miserable face. The journalists laughed at Teddy Boy. The bisons made indecent remarks. The judge had to bang his wooden hammer several times. The clatter of wood upon wood beat in Isaac’s ears. The bailiff screamed, “Quiet in the court.” But people wouldn’t listen to the bailiff. They were having too good a time. Justice Dorn rose from his chair and walked that little “mile” in back of the bench. You could feel the anger in his jowls. That enormous body left its own peculiar wake. The bench had become a rocking boat. “I will clear the room if we can’t have some peace. I won’t tolerate disrespect.” But his pronouncement wasn’t necessary. His very bulk had silenced the spectators. He sat down.
And that’s when Cardinal Jim entered the courtroom in his red beanie. It was as if the prosecutor’s case had fallen into some godless ruin. The Three Sisters began to unravel. They’d lost their internal rhyme. All you saw at their table was a clutter of arms and legs.
The cardinal had come for Isaac. He was like his own walking cathedral. The bisons scrambled with each other to offer him a place in one of their pews. “Thank ya, thank ya,” he said. Even Justice Dorn was confused. He tried to curtsy with his bulk. “Good to see you, Your Grace.” But his belly caught behind the bench and it took him a while to wiggle free. “I mean, Your Eminence.”
“Ah, don’t bother about me,” Jim said. “Any title will do.” But the damage had been done. The appearance of Jim served to discredit the witness and make him one more invisible man. Teddy was chewing his sleeves when Selma Beard began. What Nose had to say was predictable enough. He had given Isaac the six hundred thousand dollars.
“We bought him. Isaac was our man. He did whatever he was told. When we needed a favor, my brother would tell me, Go to the Commish.’”
“And what about the honorable Isadore Wasser?”
“Iz was really close to Isaac. I watched them play chess. Isaac would have done anything for the old man.”
“Mr. DiAngelis, can you recall one specific favor?”
“Sure, we hired him to fuck with Sal Rubino’s boys….” He looked up at the owl on the bench. “Sorry, your Honor.” Then he returned to Selma Beard. “We paid him to mess up Sal. Isaac went in with his bambinos.” He pursed his lips. “The Ivanhoes.”
“And what price did you settle on?”
“I’m not sure. We lost our bookkeeper. But it had to be over a hundred K. Isaac was a greedy guy.”
“And how long has your family been associated with Isaac Sidel?”
“I’d have to guess. I’m not so terrific with dates. But he’s always been thick with the old man. Figure nine, ten years.”
“Your witness,” Selma said, bowing to Maurie and Isaac.
“No questions,” Maurie said.
Isaac clutched the tails of his counselor’s coat. “You’re gonna let him lie like that?”
“It’s much more damaging this way.”
“Maurie, ask him one or two questions, will you?”
“Isaac,” Maurie whispered, “shut the fuck up.”
Teddy wouldn’t budge. He sat in the witness box like some aphasic boy, lost in his own America. He never looked at Jerry or Eileen or the melamed. He twiddled his fingers and watched the shadows on the wall.
“Mr. DiAngelis,” the judge said. “You may go now.”
“Yes, Father,” Teddy said in all that confusion of faces.
And Maurie winked at Isaac. “That’s why I didn’t subject him to a cross. The more you hit him, the more sympathetic he becomes.”
Teddy disappeared through a side door. And Isaac sat at the defense table. He wasn’t even angry at the poor son of a bitch. Nose would never survive without Eileen’s suppers.
That was the case against Isaac Sidel. Burt, Teddy Boy, and policemen like McCall, and one of the City marshals who broke into Isaac’s box and discovered six hundred thousand dollars.
“I want to take the stand,” Isaac told his lawyer.
“They’ll burn you on the Ivanhoe business.”
“I want to take the stand.”
“Then I quit,” Maurie said. “It’s suicide. Find someone else to sit with you at the sentencing.”
“All right. Who have we got?”
“Peter Wang.”
“You’ve been building and building, and all we’ve got is the manager of a bank? Is he my character witness? Is Peter Wang going to tell how we coached a bunch of kids in our own Little League?”
“He’s enough,” Maurie said.
And Isaac went to court. He sat with his dark, dark mien at the defense table. The sketch artists began calling him Bluebeard. He looked like a pirate in all the papers. Isaac didn’t care. He watched Peter Wang climb the witness stand. “Tiny” was over six feet tall. His parents had come from Hunan Province, which raised whole colonies of giants. He didn’t have the officious look of a bank manager but the oxlike torso and piano legs of Babe Ruth. Maurie was right. The Sisters would have a hard time shaking Tiny Wang.
Maurie didn’t dance around. He went right to the Sisters’ evidence cart. State Exhibit 17-B, the six hundred thousand that was kept overnight in plastic bags inside the vaults of the castle’s own property clerk. The bailiff himself wheeled the cart across the well and handed Tiny the two bags.
“Mr. Wang,” Maurie said, “is this the money that was removed from the defendant’s safety-deposit box at your bank?”
“As far as I can tell. Yes.”
“Would you examine the evidence, please. Don’t be bashful. Just dig in.”
Tiny opened one of the plastic bags and pulled out a handful of money.
“What are the denominations, Mr. Wang?”
“They’re all hundred-dollar bills.”
“And the dates?”
“Well, they vary … Nineteen sixty-nine. Nineteen seventy-six.”
Maurice’s rump began to bulge. He always worked best with his ass sticking out. It was his own tribal instinct. “Dig in again.”
“Objection,” said Selma Beard. “I don’t get the point of this little sideshow. The money was logged in a long time ago.”
“Your Honor,” Maurie said. “Indulge me. One minute more.”
“But get on with it,” the owl said.
“Now, Mr. Wang, will you read off the dates on these bills?”
“Series Nineteen seventy-seven … series Nineteen seventy-six.”
“And can you enlighten us, Mr. Wang, tell us the last time Mr. Sidel visited your vault?”
“June eleven, Nineteen hundred and seventy-three.”
“How can you be so sure of that date?”
“We’re not like other banks. We keep a careful record of all entry slips. They’re photocopied and filed away on microfilm. And we don’t have an entry for Mr. Sidel after June eleven of that year.”
“Objection!” Selma said. “Your Honor, Mr. Goodstein has produced no such evidence in this court. Wh
ere is the magic microfilm?”
The other two Sisters began to whisper in her ear. “Your Honor, I’ll withdraw that objection. I think Mr. Wang ought to have the privilege of hanging himself and Mr. Goodstein’s client.”
“Your Honor,” Tiny said. “I can produce the microfilm today … tomorrow.”
“It won’t be necessary,” Selma said. “I believe you.”
“Your witness,” Maurie said.
And Trish Van Loon, she of the long legs, got up to cross-examine Tiny Wang. The Sisters seemed to have found their rhyme again; they were that one magnificent spider. Michaelson sat at his table with an enormous grin.
“Mr. Wang,” Trish said, “how long have you known the defendant Isaac Sidel?”
“Long time,” Tiny said. “Twenty years.”
“And would you consider him a friend?”
“Yes. We’re rivals in the same league.”
“Rivals? I thought you were friends.”
“Yes. But we manage different teams for P.A.L.”
“Ah, the Police Athletic League. Then you manage a bank and a baseball team.”
“I prefer the baseball team,” Tiny said, and Trish laughed along with the journalists and the owl on the bench. She let the laughter die.
“And Mr. Sidel was a friend before he ever became a client at your bank.”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell us about some of your other clients?”
“List is too long,” Tiny said.
“I’ll help you. Does Isadore Wasser keep an account at your bank?”
“Objection,” Maurie said. “That’s irrelevant.”
“No. I’ll allow it,” the judge said.
“Mr. Wasser has an account. But it’s very small.”
“I didn’t ask you that, Mr. Wang.”
“He plays mah-jongg in Chinatown. He needs a little pocket money. So he comes to the bank.”
“That’s a delightful story, Mr. Wang. But I’m not interested in the details.”
“Objection!” Maurie said. “Ms. Van Loon is gagging my witness.”
“Mr. Wang, you may answer if you wish.”
“Nothing to answer,” Tiny said. “He plays mah-jongg. He’s forgetful. He needs cash.”
“You’re the provider, Mr. Wang, aren’t you? Just like you helped provide Isaac Sidel. Can you explain to us how the defendant has all this miracle money?”
The Good Policeman (The Isaac Sidel Novels) Page 22