“LeComte?”
“He’s the only one who can lead you to Margaret Tolstoy, even if she is in Damascus. But I have one question.” And Farouk’s eyes began to flutter. “How much are you asking for Joe DiMaggio, Nineteen hundred and thirty-six?”
He waylaid LeComte outside his Manhattan pied-à-terre.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll deal.”
LeComte looked at him. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I said I’ll deal. I’ll go on the road. I’ll be your Hamilton Fellow. But I want one meet with Margaret Tolstoy.”
“That’s impossible. The Syrians have her.”
“One meet, LeComte. It doesn’t have to last very long. I want to see her face.”
“Do you know how many strings I’d have to pull? Can you appreciate the logistics of it?”
“One meet.”
“But I’m not saying where or when. It might take a month. Two months. A year. I can’t promise.”
Isaac brooded on his way home. He missed the deep, rounded bowl of a Catskill sky. He thought and thought about his white hotel on Swan Lake. And he began to have a funny feeling. He got his chauffeur out of bed. “Sergeant, crank up the bus. I’ll need you in half an hour.”
“Where are we going, Chief?”
“Never mind.”
They drove across the Washington Bridge. Isaac could sense his own ruination in the wind behind his ears. The sergeant got him to the borders of that white hotel.
“Wait here,” Isaac said.
“I don’t like it. Will you borrow my gun?”
“Wait here.”
And Isaac clambered up the hill to the hotel’s front porch. He couldn’t find a light in any window. None of his own men would have been fool enough to advertise themselves with little squares of light.
He’d come on a hunch, that’s all. A policeman’s holiday. He entered that darkened cave of the Hotel Gardenia.
A voice boomed between the walls. “Stop right there.”
Don Isacco smiled. “Burt, is this how LeComte takes care of his men?”
“I’m not with Justice. I never was. LeComte borrowed me for a little while. I told you he’d fuck us. You wouldn’t listen. You gave him the Ivanhoes.”
“I wouldn’t do that.”
“Are you carrying a grudge?” the Afrikaner asked.
“Against you, Burt?”
“You know what I bloody well mean.”
“Where are the other lads? With you?”
“Don’t be silly. We’ve been discarded, boss. LeComte took Allen Locksley and got rid of the rest, gave them tickets to Timbuktu.”
“But you’re my commandant.”
“That’s a laugh,” Burt said. “He was going to deport me, Isaac.”
“You don’t have to explain. But how did you get all that cash into my box?”
“Simple. I took your key. You were always absentminded.”
“And the six hundred thousand?”
“That was money we swiped from Sal. I moved it from our vaults to Tiny’s bank. LeComte was setting up the Three Sisters. Little Maurice was so high on coke, LeComte had to lead him by the hand. LeComte inspired your whole defense. It was like a war game. Put the Hamilton Fellow in jeopardy and then build him a pair of wings so he can fly out of Boris Michaelson’s cage. He’s a stupid man, Michaelson is. Now LeComte has the Gov and Becky Karp kissing his backside twice a day. And I saved a nice fat stocking for myself.”
“Then why didn’t you run to Lisbon or the Canaries?”
“Been waiting,” Burt said.
“For what?”
“You, my dear. I’m your liege man. You have to release me.”
“I can’t,” Isaac said. “I want to resurrect the Ivanhoes.”
“Should I fart now or later?”
“I’m serious.”
“Then I might consider putting a hole in your neck.”
“It wouldn’t do much good. You’d still belong to me.”
And Isaac walked out of the white hotel. He hummed to himself on the way down from the hill. “Brian Boru,” the sergeant muttered. “Walks into the blackest house, sits with the Devil, and comes out singing. Brian Boru.”
28
The Hamilton Fellow had five days to pack. It was as if he’d dreamt Riker’s Island, dreamt his trial. The one bit of reality was Henry Armstrong Lee. That was his particular pearl. But he wouldn’t lecture on Henry Lee. He talked baseball in Detroit. “The war was on. America missed DiMaggio. But the Giants had a wartime sub who could hit and field like Joltin’ Joe. Harry Lieberman. The Bomber. Every air-raid warden in Manhattan had his picture on the wall. Fans mobbed him at the Polo Grounds. The Giants had to unlock a secret gate for Harry, or he’d never have gotten in. But who remembers the Bomber now?”
There was silence in the auditorium. The police chiefs thought Isaac had malaria and was reliving some old wound. And then the questions came.
“Commissioner Sidel, what does this man the Bomber have to do with crime prevention?”
“Everything. He’s a sign of our collective amnesia. How can you have crime prevention without history and a sense of the past?”
The police chiefs whistled to themselves, called Isaac a sly dog who could weave baseball into the war against crime.
He stopped in Albuquerque. He stopped in Phoenix and Tucson, talking, talking about the Bomber. And then in Oklahoma City he spotted a man who had his own blue beard. It was Teddy DiAngelis. He trundled up to Isaac like a corpse at high noon. His eyes were black buttons in his head. His mouth was a penciled line. He couldn’t even sweat in the middle of a heat wave. LeComte must have been hiding him here in the witness protection program.
“Isaac, the Sisters said I would go to jail. I got scared. Michaelson gave me a script. I memorized it.… I heard about your lecture in the newspapers. I had to come. Isaac, I wouldn’t forget the Bomber. I remember all his home runs.”
“If LeComte put you in witness protection, you’re not supposed to surface like this.”
“Fuck witness protection. It’s not a life. I’m in the same line of work. I whacked out two people since I got to Oklahoma.”
“Jesus, don’t tell me that. I’m a cop.”
“I called Eileen. She said I was a rat bastard son of a bitch.”
Teddy started to blubber with his big blue head. Isaac was the last bit of family he had on the whole crumpled face of America. He took out a pencil and licked the point. “I’ll give you my address. We could eat some ribs together and—”
“Don’t even talk about it, Teddy. You’re a submarine, a ghost, a guy in deep slumber.”
Isaac left the auditorium. He cursed LeComte. But he was still the Hamilton Fellow. He arrived in St. Louis that afternoon. He went straight to the children’s shelter. He had no authority to meet with McCardle, but he lied. “I’m on a mission for the Justice Department.”
“We have our rules,” the head nurse told him. She was as muscular as Isaac, but she didn’t have mean eyes. She was protecting McCardle. St. Louis wasn’t on Isaac’s itinerary. LeComte hadn’t invited him back to this village of the old crusader king.
“Well, you get Loren Cole on the line,” Isaac said. “He’s chief of detectives in this town.”
“I know that. I’ll give you five minutes with Mr. McCardle.”
Isaac wasn’t even allowed into the hearth of the children’s shelter. He had to wait near the door like some bloody dog.
“Hello, grandpa.”
Kingsley had the same brown jumpsuit that he’d worn the last time in St. Louis. And Isaac explored the dark design of his face—the tiny, mottled ears, the bitten nose—and he felt cheated: the kid was a fucking old man.
“Sorry,” Isaac said. “My schedule is tight. Or we could have gone to a Cardinal game.”
“I’ve been grounded,” McCardle said. “Can’t leave the premises.”
“I still have some pull.”
“But it wouldn’t
be democratic,” McCardle said.
“Since when are you such a man of the people?”
“I always was, grandpa.”
The nurse hovered over them, pointing to the clock on the wall.
“Ma’am,” Isaac said. “Couldn’t we have a little privacy?”
And the nurse disappeared into some corner of the jail.
“Grandpa, your head is all blue.”
“’S nothing,” Isaac said. “Riker’s Island disease. Couldn’t I get you something? Like a baseball card on ‘Country’ Slaughter?”
“I wouldn’t know what to do with it, grandpa. Some kid would steal the card and I’d have to break his head. And then where would I be? I have to go. I’m glad you got out of jail.”
And McCardle went behind a door in his brown jumpsuit, like a convict who could never graduate. Isaac’s blue head was boiling. He’d been tricked by the crusader king.
Loren Cole was outside the shelter, sitting in a police car. Isaac skirted past him. “Isaac?” Loren said.
“Fuck you.”
“Will you get into the vehicle, please?”
“Make me.”
Loren drove alongside Isaac.
“I should have guessed it,” Isaac muttered. “Giving me all this bull about McCardle. How some court was going to sentence a nine-year-old kid unless you pulled him out of circulation. He’s not a kid, is he?”
“No,” Loren said.
“He just happens to look like a runt. How old is McCardle? Twenty-five?”
“I’m not sure,” Loren said.
“Jesus Christ. A distant cousin of yours? Part of the clan? Ain’t that so?”
“He’s my nephew. My dead sister’s boy.”
“Did you ever stop and think, Loren, that a prison sentence might be better than this? He’s stuck here for life.”
“He wouldn’t have survived in the slammer,” Loren said. “The niggers would have treated him like turtle soup … now will you get in? I have to drive you to the airport. The Justice Department’s been hollering at me all afternoon. People are expecting you in Salt Lake City.”
Isaac swam in the Great Salt Lake. He’d never have believed the buoyancy. He floated for half a mile without a rubber tube or a raft. He was much more civilized with the police chiefs. He went to their private shooting range. He fired a Colt Commander at a wooden rabbit that hopped like a maddening ball along a metal track. Isaac broke the rabbit’s tail….
It was June and Isaac wore his leather coat in L.A. He bought a giant peach at the Farmers Market. He marched around, looking like a Nazi policeman who’d escaped from a television pilot. He spoke at the Beverly Hilton. He didn’t mention the Bomber once. He sang for his supper like a good little boy. There was a group of mystery writers in the audience that wanted to know about his months at Riker’s. “Mr. Sidel,” their leader asked, “how did you get along with the prison population?”
“No problems.”
“But you were in an isolation ward, weren’t you?”
“In theory, yes. But I mingled. I had access to the other cellblocks.”
“Is it true that Riker’s was one of Henry Lee’s hideouts?”
Isaac wondered if the poor bastard was a district attorney on the side. He wasn’t going to give Henry’s routes away.
“It’s possible. A house of detention is like any hotel. Henry might have checked in. But I wouldn’t know.”
Isaac was staying at the Chateau Marmont. From his room in the rafters he could look down into that bungalow colony called West Hollywood, with its endless beads of light. His phone rang. It was two in the morning.
“Grandpa, I should have been more polite.”
“Kingsley, did you pull my telephone number out of a hat?”
“Loren gave it to me.”
Isaac still couldn’t think of McCardle as a lad of twenty-five or thirty. “Who’s the grandpa?” he asked. “Me or you?”
McCardle laughed. “I’ve been fourteen so long, I can’t remember what it’s like to have a birthday … shit, nurse is comin’. Gotta blow. But be careful.”
“What the hell for? I’m a goddamn lecturer, Mr. McCardle. All I do is talk and talk.”
“My back is itchin’. And it means something. Good-bye.”
Isaac stayed near the window. He heard footsteps outside his door. The Hamilton Fellow didn’t have to get involved in mysteries. And he wouldn’t wear a gun. He opened the door and could see a man in a felt hat at the far end of the hall.
“Hey, you look familiar,” Isaac said. “Have you been to any of my lectures?”
But the man’s face was obscured. He had a winter coat that was as incongruous in California as Isaac himself.
“Want to come inside?” Isaac asked, reaching for a lamp, but the guy in the felt hat started to run. Isaac locked his door. He didn’t sleep. He got to the airport at seven and had a pathetic bagel at one of the counters. And for the first time in months Isaac was conscious of his worm. The beast hadn’t bothered him much at Riker’s. It ate all the prison food. It never grabbed at him during the trial. And now at L.A. International it decided to roil. It sucked at Isaac with its hundred heads. He could feel his insides snake to the worm’s electric rhythms. Isaac had to sit.
A blue head floated toward him. It was unmistakable. Teddy DiAngelis had come out of Oklahoma City. LeComte had him on a curious schedule. The submarine had surfaced twice. He didn’t smile. He approached Isaac and extended his sleeve. And that’s when Isaac saw the silver barrel of his single-shot, that derringer he could produce like hocuspocus. And now it made sense. Nose had been stalking Isaac. He’d appeared at Isaac’s lecture to wind his fucking clock. But Isaac wouldn’t dally in Oklahoma with Ted. He’d run to St. Louis on a whim to see the ex-boy, Kingsley McCardle. And Nose had missed his chance.
“Go on,” Isaac growled. “Do your stuff.”
The derringer shot back into Teddy’s sleeve. Isaac had startled him. His button eyes exploded with crazy points of light. He looked like a blind man in the middle of a hurricane when someone sidled up to Ted and struck him with a blackjack hidden in a nylon sock. Nose fell into Isaac’s arms. The guy with the blackjack wore a felt hat. He reached into Noses sleeve, pulled out the derringer, and put it into his own pocket.
“Margaret,” Isaac muttered. “You can take off that bloody hat.”
“No,” she said. “I’d rather look like a man. It’s safer that way.”
“You were never in Damascus. LeComte didn’t sell you to the Syrians.”
“Who would believe a fairy tale like that?”
“Only an imbecile,” Isaac said. “He just shifted you to another part of the forest.”
Her hair was bunched under her hat and her breasts were invisible with the coat she wore. Ah, Isaac forgot. Margaret had been an actress most of her life. He wondered what identity the Bureau had given her now. Her eyes had lost that almond color. Her mouth was redder than Isaac had recalled. Was she Rita from Detroit? Or Carolina Carole?
“It wasn’t LeComte who sent you.”
“No. I was in New Orleans. I heard two men talking at a poker game. They laughed every time they mentioned your name.”
“Were they melameds, like Izzy Wasser?”
“You are an imbecile. They belonged to Sal Rubino.”
“Nose is in witness protection and he works for Sal?”
“Why not? Who else will have him? Isaac, you’d better do something about the Rubinos.”
“I will. But how did you find where I was?”
“I bribed a clerk at Justice. It wasn’t hard. All your wanderings are in the public record.”
“Anastasia?”
“I’m not Anastasia anymore.”
“Ah, the little girl with the hole in her sock is gone. And I suppose I ought to forget the samovar. But I can’t, Anastasia.”
“Shut up,” she said.
“Margaret,” Isaac said with Nose still in his arms. “Margaret. Haven’t you been LeComte’s lit
tle swallow long enough?”
“It doesn’t really matter who my masters are. Haven’t you figured that yet? You’re too serious, Commissioner Sidel. You always were.”
“Yeah,” Isaac said, “but couldn’t you stay with me?”
“I’d disappoint you, Isaac. I was never much of a housewife, even when I was twelve. And I can’t go back to Manhattan. So shut up. I’ll be late for New Orleans.” She pointed to Ted. “What about the sharpshooter?”
“I’ll spank him when he wakes up.”
Margaret disappeared and Isaac sat with that huge homicidal baby. He had plenty of time. He didn’t bother about the plane he had to catch. There were no pinch hitters in Isaac’s universe. Whatever audience there was would have to wait.
She sat on the plane with her new red hair. The man next to her tried to flirt with Margaret. He was a Cajun lawyer from Magazine Street. He wore a toupee and was twenty years younger than Margaret.
“I can get you a Hollywood contract,” he said. “Just like that.”
“I’m a grandma,” Margaret told him.
“Makes no difference to me. You have a boyfriend, doll?”
“Yes, his name is Isaac. And he swallows people for a living.”
“But he isn’t on the plane. It’s just you and me, cher.”
“And my grandchildren,” Margaret said, thinking about that schoolboy she’d left behind in L.A., with his sideburns and big brown eyes. It was the longest romance in history. She laughed at the image of herself as the reluctant bride of Isaac Sidel. The lawyer let his hand drop like a silver rodent onto her lap. “Just you and me, cher.” Margaret bent his thumb back until he had to bite his lip to keep from howling.
“Are you happy, cher?” she said, and gave the lawyer back his thumb. He hopped into the seat behind Margaret. “Will you take me to Galatoire’s? Can we have a little dirty rice and pompano while you reach into my pants? … Next time don’t disturb a grandma.”
But she started to cry, because she’d eaten her own children, orphans who’d wandered out of some asylum in that Odessa under Little Angel Street. Margaret wished she were a child of the Catacombs, a night animal who’d never spilled into the sunny, outside world.
The Good Policeman (The Isaac Sidel Novels) Page 24