The Good Policeman (The Isaac Sidel Novels)

by Jerome Charyn

  “I cannot explain.”

  “Did a pixie go into his vault?”

  “A pixie perhaps, but not another human being.”

  “Isn’t it possible that you yourself were Mr. Wasser’s front?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Did you take money from Mr. Wasser and put it into the defendant’s box?”

  “No. It’s not possible. It is a double-key lock. Only Mr. Sidel has the second key.”

  “But he could have given it to you.”

  “Maurie,” Isaac whispered. “Stop her, will you?”

  “No. She didn’t do her fucking homework. Let her talk.”

  “Come, come,” Trish said. “Mr. Sidel could have let you borrow his key … so that his name would not be on any slip.”

  “I would not take his key.”

  “But we only have your word for it. And a mysterious pile of money. How did it get there, Mr. Wang? How did it get there?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You weren’t always a bank manager, were you? Can you tell us what you did before you inherited your seat at the North China Bank?”

  Tiny mumbled something.

  “Louder,” she said. “I can’t hear you.”

  “I was with the FBI. Special-agent-in-charge of the Philadelphia field office … until I retired.”

  Trish looked at Tiny, and the spectators looked at her. The jury seemed like two rows of crippled children.

  “Told you,” Maurie said. “The bitch didn’t do her homework.”

  27

  He arrived on the fourteenth floor in a new black leather coat that had been hanging from a merchants fire escape on Orchard Street. He didn’t bargain. He depleted his bank account to buy the coat. He looked like a Gestapo agent. His beard was still blue. People trembled when they saw the jailbird. His sergeants wanted to congratulate him, but they didn’t dare. He wasn’t supposed to have come back from that grave at Riker’s Island. He was upsetting the order of things, and this Department thrived on some secret internal order amid the chaos. The sergeants had gotten used to Sweets and now they had a Commish they’d wanted to forget. He wouldn’t play the diplomat.

  He rang for his old First Dep.

  Sweets arrived with Isaac’s badge. “Glad to see you, boss. I was getting worried. I didn’t want to die in your chair.”

  “Hunts Point,” Isaac said without a hello.

  He pulled a dozen detectives out of the five boroughs and formed a special “turbulence team.” Some of them had Manfred Coen’s sad blue eyes. They wore black leather coats like the PC. They moved around after midnight. Isaac descended upon Hunts Point, looking for the vigilantes who had murdered Macho, his own retarded boy. He saw frightened people hovering in dirty halls. He saw rats the size of dogs, and dogs that looked like Moby Dick with a tail and big teeth. There was rubble all around him. Children tramped across the rubble like hundred-year-old men. Isaac didn’t have the heart to interrogate them. He shot a few wild dogs and returned to Manhattan.

  He went to Sal Rubino’s steak house with his leather-coated army. Sal was eating pasta primavera with the vice presidents of his cement company and their wives. He sang bits of Puccini with his fork in the air and delivered dirty jokes while he squeezed the thigh of one particular wife. He was in the best of moods. There were no more Ivanhoes to disturb his numbers machine. The melamed was out of commission. Nose had revealed himself as a government rat. And Jerry DiAngelis had to retreat within the walls of his rifle club to stay alive. Sal was now the prince and high priest of all the dons. The other Families kissed his cheek and called him cardinale. But he still missed Margaret Tolstoy. It was funny how a puttana could get under your skin. She was the FBI’s biggest ballbreaker. She’d destroyed mob captains and soldiers all over the country. And when he’d tried to get rid of her, she’d killed his own captain in the end.

  Sal looked up from the table and saw a blue-headed man in a black leather coat. But Sal was the cardinal and he didn’t have to stop eating for any cop. “Buon giorno, Isaac,” he said. “How do you like the fresh air? Better than Riker’s, eh? Come, have some pasta with my people. The steaks are on the grill. No more arguments, Isaac. I’ll intro—”

  And that’s when he caught himself tumbling out of his chair. Isaac was on top of him, smothering Sal with his leather coat. And Sal felt a pain that he’d never had before. It was like a shark was chewing on his head. He started to howl. “Mama.” The crazy Commish was biting his ear. And then the biting stopped.

  “Sal, next time you start to kill a man, you’d better succeed.”

  There wasn’t a word in the papers. But the whole town knew. Don Isacco had declared war on the mob. He’d wrestled with Sal Rubino after midnight, bitten off a piece of his ear. All the Irish sergeants were singing lullabies. “Brian Boru is back. We have our king.” And Isaac had a visitor on the fourteenth floor. It was Boris Michaelson. He’d moved out of Maiden Lane.

  “Did Becky squeeze you, Boris? Did she say that you’d bungled the job with all your little attorney generals? Couldn’t even bury Isaac and you had the best prosecution team in town. How are the Three Sisters?”

  “They resigned. I’ve brought them into my practice. I’m representing Sal Rubino now. I have a court order, Isaac. If you ever go near Sal again, I’ll slap an injunction on you so fast you’ll be back at Riker’s before you can blink.”

  “I appreciate your interest, Boris. Say hello to the girls for me. And get the hell out of my office.”

  “I will,” Michaelson said. “You’re a lucky son of a bitch. You and your Chinese bank. How did you manage it? Was that Ivanhoe money in the vault?”

  “Ask Burt. Burton ought to know. He was your star witness. And what about Peter Wang? Your girls fucked up. Their shooflies must have figured he was one more Chinaman without a past.”

  “It was a mistake, that’s all. Our computers got him mixed up with another Peter Wang, a former shoe salesman.”

  “Boris, you’re full of shit. You just never dreamed that Tiny could ever have been with the FBI. Maurie was right. The girls didn’t do their homework.”

  Boris left, but Isaac didn’t have any peace. Henry Armstrong put on his women’s clothes again and robbed a pair of banks back-to-back in Queens. He scribbled a note to the Daily News. “Dear Editor, Greetings from The Most Wanted Man. Tell the FBI that they’ll never take me. Your Friend, Henry Armstrong Lee.”

  The Most Wanted Man in America robbed another two banks. He had his own “column” now in the News. “Bank robbing is my business. I pay quarterly taxes to Uncle Sam. But I don’t leave a return address.”

  Meanwhile Isaac sat behind Teddy Roosevelt’s desk and waited for Henry to surface again. It was an FBI informant at Riker’s who ratted on Henry Lee. And Isaac was one of the last men to arrive at the bombed-out hill in Harlem where the Bureau and Isaac’s own Emergency Service Unit had surrounded the bank robber. The FBI was working directly with ESU. They had fucking elephant guns with sniperscopes that could see into a cave. They had Daniel Boone, the Department’s robot that could knock a door down and punch a brick wall to pieces. Daniel Boone was four feet high. He stood on caterpillar tracks. He had clawlike arms. The video cameras laced to him were almost like a head.

  “I don’t want Daniel Boone,” Isaac told Chief Whitman, the commander of ESU.

  “But he has an arsenal in there,’ Whitman said. “And he won’t talk to us. He’s threatening to kill whoever comes into his sights. It has to be Daniel Boone.”

  “I’m going over the hump,” Isaac said. “Alone.”

  “Sir,” Whitman said. “I can’t let you do that. You’re a civilian. And I’m in charge of this unit.”

  “Are you going to arrest me, Whitman?”

  “You can bust me, send me to the Bronx, but I’m responsible for your safety.”

  “That’s the problem. It’s safer on the other side of the hump.”

  And Isaac climbed over the hill in his lea
ther coat. He was marching in some no-man’s-land. His feet sank into the mud. He saw a rat’s head, and he prayed that Henry Lee would recognize him in all the leather he had on. He didn’t dare shout his name, because he couldn’t tell how reliable the echoes were. Isaac made no sudden moves. He marched. He felt like he was crossing a baseball field. Ah, if only he could have been a center fielder, like Harry Lieberman. He would have galloped around in long dark socks. And he’d never have gone to the Mexican League.

  He arrived at a block of abandoned buildings. Henry Lee had his own fort. He could have been on the roofs somewhere or down in the sinkhole. Isaac had to trust his own intuition. He hauled his ass through a window as he’d done the last time with Henry Lee. The bank robber was sitting on the floor with a bandolier of ammunition and a couple of M16s. He was shivering in his women’s clothes. But he didn’t have a wig. He wore a kerchief around his head.

  “Little brother, did you bring me any beer or soda pop?”

  Isaac gritted his teeth. “I didn’t see any groceries in the field.”

  “Well, come and sit,” Henry said. And Isaac sat next to the bank robber.

  “Why didn’t you stay at Riker’s where you had a good deal?”

  “I keep telling you, little brother. Harlem is my home.”

  “But couldn’t you have found better quarters? I mean, you robbed four fucking banks.”

  “I give it all away,” Henry said. “I can’t hold on to money. What happened to Macho?”

  “He got stomped to death in Hunts Point.”

  “That was Short Eyes? I heard about it on the radio. He was trying to get it down with a twelve-year-old kid and the neighbors caught him.”

  “Neighbors? A posse, you mean. And what evidence did they have? It was all circumstantial. It wouldn’t have held up in court.”

  “Courts don’t mean shit at Hunts Point. You need an education.”

  “Then give me one.”

  The bank robber started to laugh. He used the kerchief to wipe his eyes. “I ain’t got the time for classes. The Man wants my body, wants my bones.”

  They both heard an odd, cranking noise, like a mammoth tòy on an anthill. Henry grabbed his rifles. “They’re coming, little brother. You’d better split. You’re just one more white boy who’s been to Riker’s. They’ll mess you up.”

  The noise grew louder and louder. “Don’t worry,” Isaac said. “It’s Daniel. He belongs to the emergency team.”

  “I believe you. But who the fuck is Daniel?”

  “Our robot. He chews doors.”

  They crawled to one of the windows. Daniel Boone was riding in the mud. The robot’s caterpillar tracks kept climbing hills until Daniel approached the house that Henry and Isaac were in.

  “I ain’t doing time again in Kansas.”

  “Come on,” Isaac said. “You’re Henry Lee. Who could ever hold you in the can?”

  They walked out of the building while Daniel Boone began to demolish the walls. Isaac shielded the bank robber with the skirts of his leather coat in case some sharpshooter had funny ideas about Henry Lee. They started crossing the field together. Henry Lee clung to Isaac’s coat.

  Chief Whitman met them in the middle of the mud.

  “Go on,” Isaac shouted at the chief. “Arrest the man. And read him his rights.”

  He was summoned to the Blue Room at City Hall. Isaac could have told Becky Karp to scratch herself, but there would have been a big stink. The mayor was presenting him with a medal. He was the only man alive who had ever captured Henry Armstrong Lee, captured him twice. He arrived in his Gestapo coat and wouldn’t take it off. Bottles of pink champagne were waiting for him in the Blue Room. Reporters surrounded Isaac. His blue head appeared in front of television cameras. He had a garden of microphones under his chin.

  “Commissioner, was it dangerous out there in Indian country with Henry Armstrong Lee?”

  “No,” Isaac said. “He was a lamb.”

  Becky whisked him away from the microphones. “You’ll spoil the whole shebang. Why did you come in that thug’s coat of yours? I can’t pin a medal on such a coat. And you ought to shave, buddy. I don’t like my commissioners wearing beards. It sets a bad example. And do me a favor, Isaac. Don’t give interviews, huh? I’ll do all the talking … what’s the matter?”

  “You shouldn’t have sent Michaelson and his Three Sisters after me.”

  “Did I have a choice? You were meddling in Mafia affairs. I couldn’t gag the corruptions commissioner. It was his party.”

  “Bullshit,” Isaac said. “He’d never have moved without your consent.”

  “Isaac, I have the primaries to consider. You stopped being a policeman when you stepped inside your own secret mirror.”

  “Then why are you giving me a medal?”

  “Because you were cleared. And you captured that pest.”

  “I didn’t capture him. I just wanted to keep Henry alive. But eat your heart out, Rebecca. I might decide to run against you in the primaries.”

  She deserted Isaac and climbed the platform to her microphone. The room was caught in a blaze of light. She held the Peter Minuit medal in her hand. It was a tiny slug of gold with Minuit’s face on the surface and the City’s seal. Isaac had to smile, because it was Minuit who’d cheated the Indians out of Manhattan Island. He was the City’s first pirate.

  Isaac wouldn’t listen to Becky’s babble. She could praise him until the sky crashed into the Blue Room. But he had to go and get his medal or the whole City government would have stopped. “We love you, Commissioner,” she said to the cameras. “You’re a son of New York.” And she did finally pin the medal onto Isaac’s coat. “Cocksucker,” she sang in his ear. And she begged the reporters not to bother Isaac.

  “The man’s been through some ordeal.”

  Isaac mingled with the guests. He drank champagne with Cardinal Jim. “Mazel tov,” the cardinal said.

  “Thank you, Jim. You took a chance when you showed up at my trial. I might have been convicted and …”

  “Boyo, it was nothing, nothing at all.”

  The cardinal had to waltz away from Isaac to hold a little press conference with Rebecca Karp. And in the wake of Jim’s red beanie Isaac saw LeComte. The cultural commissar was chatting with Maurie Goodstein. The pols wouldn’t leave Maurie alone. They kept tugging at him. Maurie had returned to civilization, and the town wanted to be in his good graces again. Maurie was terrific collateral. None of the pols knew when they might need him in court. They lured him into a corner, and Isaac had LeComte to himself.

  “Where’s Margaret?”

  “I love your medal, Isaac. Now you have two heavy hitters on your side. Hamilton and Peter Minuit.”

  “Where’s Margaret?”

  “I sold her to the Syrians.”

  “Sold her? She’s not a bloody cow.”

  “She’s worse,” LeComte said. “A homicidal lady. Had to get rid of her, Isaac. There were too many corpses lying around.”

  “Jesus, you’re a lovely man. I’m glad I stole Henry Lee from you and your boys at the Bureau.”

  “Isaac, you only walked in the mud. We have Henry Lee. I don’t begrudge you the headlines. You’re our Hamilton Fellow. That’s why I’m here. I want you on the road again.”

  “A jailbird like me?”

  “You’re twice as valuable. You beat the rap. You made Rebecca look foolish. She picked on her own policeman.”

  “Is that what it’s all about? You’d like some Republican sitting where Rebecca sits.”

  “I’d rather have you.”

  “Then why did you lend Teddy DiAngelis to the Three Sisters? He was your ace.”

  “I had to give them something, or people might have said it was a cover-up. And I was having some thoughts about letting you sink. Serious thoughts. You are a pain in the ass. But you can thank the Powerhouse.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Cardinal Jim. He pressured me.”

  �
��I still don’t get it.”

  “He didn’t want a black police commissioner. He would have lost his pull with the Department. The Irish love you, Isaac. They’re already dying out. But they’d have disappeared completely with a black Commish.”

  “So it’s all fucking politics, isn’t it?”

  “No. The cardinal’s fond of you. That was the clincher.”

  And Isaac walked out of his own celebration at City Hall.

  He went to Rivington Street. He dug out his entire collection of baseball cards, all the stock he had. From George Sisler, 1915, to Joe DiMaggio, 1936, and Harry Lieberman, 1942.

  He met with King Farouk.

  “Ismail, I’ll give you everything. But get Margaret Tolstoy out of Damascus. I don’t want her dying there. I won’t see her. I won’t talk to her. I promise. But get her out.”

  Isaac didn’t care if Farouk was Syria’s chief of counterintelligence. He still had the manner and the refinement of a clerk.

  “Even if I could help you, and I can’t,” Farouk said, “I could never take your Harry Lieberman. I know how much you love that card … you shouldn’t tempt me. I’m a fanatic. Please, put your cards away.”

  “And what about Margaret?”

  “I have no voice in that matter. I didn’t deal her away from LeComte.”

  “But is she in Damascus?”

  “Probably. Probably not. Never trust an intelligence chief. We all behave like little brokers. I wanted to attend your trial, but I thought it might compromise you if word of it ever got out. I did have one of my own men in the courtroom. It was curious, your trial, like a tale from Scheherazade.”

  “It wasn’t so curious,” Isaac said. “Burt was LeComte’s man. From the beginning.”

  “Yes,” Farouk said. “I would imagine so. But the six hundred thousand dollars?”

  “Burt must have done business for LeComte on the side. Drugs. Bond swindles. Bank robberies. Who knows?”

  “And the bank manager?”

  “Tiny? I guess he was also LeComte’s man.”

  “Ah, now you’re beginning to think like a spy. Isaac, go back to the fixer.”