“Hey,” Quentin shouted, “don’t you want your envelope?”
“Not today.”
He’d have to distance himself from Quentin’s weekly “touch.” He watched the homeless men and women living under blankets and tiny tents. Their hands were black. They had no running water in this ruined garden.
He didn’t want to go back and interrogate Rita again. She was lying or Quent was lying or both of them were covering up. It had something to do with Margaret Tolstoy. That was Wig’s guess.
He walked out of the garden.
PART TWO
5.
There was a second corpse. Also Geronimo Jones. At the Atlantic Avenue Armory in Brooklyn. Then a third. Under a blanket at Grand Central Station. There was no ID. Just a xeroxed note stuffed in his mouth. Crime Scene had to test the saliva before they would return the note to Sweets. It was some weird manifesto.
We are sick of hoboes and mongrels and niggers and kikes. We believe in the virtues of Old New York.
—The Knickerbocker Boys
Monte Ward
Will White
Jay Penny
Long John Silver
Sam Wise
Jesse Nichols
Morris deMorris
Alexander Hamilton
Herman Long
Tobias Little
Isaac kept perusing that row of fictional madmen. “Long John Silver” had come out of Treasure Island, of course. And “Alexander Hamilton” was a slap at Isaac, who’d been the first Hamilton Fellow. But the other names haunted him. Will White, Will White. It was like a poetic laundry list. Isaac brooded about the names and the homeless men who were being killed.
He met with Sweets and Wig.
“I’ll need my own team. Twenty cops and a command post.”
Sweets covered his eyes with his huge basketballer’s hands. Then he peered out at Isaac.
“Keep away from my cops.”
“Your cops?” Isaac said. “Who’s the mayor?”
“Rebecca Karp.”
“She’s sentenced herself to a rocking chair.”
“Becky’s still my boss.”
“Not for long,” Isaac said. “I had to twist her arm to take you on as the Commish … I’ll be your boss come January.”
“This is December, baby.”
“Sweets,” Isaac said, “I’m a cop.”
“Yeah, the Pink Commish,” said Wig.
“Sweets, will you shut him up? He offed the original Geronimo Jones.”
“I’ll massacre both of you,” Sweets said, lunging with his basketballer’s hands. “I want some peace. We have a band of crazies out there. The Knickerbocker Boys.”
“Honkey motherfuckers,” Wig said.
“Sweets, give me something. I can’t go it all alone. I’m stranded.”
“He flopped my whole detail at the mansion,” Wig said. “Let him borrow some of Rebecca’s new boys.”
“I don’t want Rebecca’s boys.”
“You have Barbarossa,” Sweets said.
“He’s my son-in-law. No one will take me seriously if I run around with Barbarossa all the time.”
“Then you’ll have to tough it out until January,” Wig said.
“I could embarrass you, Sweets. I could ask the D.A. to deputize me. He knows his politics. He’ll let the mayor-elect form his own squad.”
“You’ll still have nothing,” Sweets said. “I’ll change that fucking squad every day of the week.”
“All right,” Isaac said. “What have you come up with?”
“On the Knickerbocker Boys? Precious little. The names don’t add up to much on our computers.”
“Not even Long John Silver?”
“I’m not talking literature, Isaac. I’m talking facts.”
“But isn’t there a make on the three homeless men?”
“Nothing,” Sweets said. “They’re like characters out of a missing book. No positive ID. They could have fallen off another planet.”
“There has to be a reason that they’re so anonymous,” Isaac said. “Who’s dumping dead bodies in our lap?”
“Crazies … freaks.”
“No. There’s a pattern. I haven’t found it yet.”
And Isaac slipped out of the PC’s office, muttering to himself.
“Resign,” Wig said, “or you’ll have that honkey on your hands.”
“I can live with Isaac,” Sweets said. “Wig, what the hell is going down?”
“Honkeys are dying in different parts of town.”
“Stop stroking me,” Sweets said. “And cut this ‘honkey’ shit. I’m not a black man once I get out of bed.”
* * *
Isaac got into his usual bum’s clothes and was about to go undercover when he received a telephone call from Rebecca’s rocking chair.
“He quit,” she said. “He left Landmarks.”
“What?”
“Schyler Knott, you dope. He’s given up his chairmanship. You ought to be glad. Now all the barons will be on your side.”
“Wait a minute. Why would Schyler suddenly quit? He’s the toughest preservationist in town.”
“Ah, he’s gone back to baseball,” Rebecca said. “That’s his first love.”
“I won’t accept his resignation.”
“Schmuck,” Rebecca said. “I already did. You can’t afford Schyler. He’s a nuisance. Isaac, builders have to build. You can’t shackle them with a maniac like Schyler. Let him devote his life to the memory of Joe DiMaggio and Willie Mays.”
“Schyler’s an antiquarian. He doesn’t want to remember Willie Mays.”
“Didn’t I tell you? He’s a racist. And we got rid of him.”
“Madam Mayor,” Isaac said, “did you pressure him to resign?”
“I haven’t talked to Schyler in six months.”
She hung up on the mayor-elect, who hiked to Greenwich Village in his bum’s clothes. Schyler lived in an Emeric Gray on Horatio Street. The building had been put up before the big Crash. It was a 1927 classic, with colored stones above every window, a revolving door furnished in cherrywood, a canopy with gorgeous brass poles. The building was owned by one of the barons, Judah Bellow.
The doorman was very superior with Isaac. “Sir, I’m sorry, but I can’t allow beggars in the building.”
“Why not?” Isaac growled, revealing his Glock. “Do you have some kind of fucking dress code? It’s illegal. I didn’t come in without my shoes and socks. That’s all I need.”
“I’ll have to call the super.”
“Call him, but get me Schyler Knott on the intercom. Tell him it’s the Pink Commish, Isaac Sidel.”
The doorman started to blush. “I’m sorry, Mr. Mayor. I didn’t catch your disguise.”
“These are my winter casuals,” Isaac said. And he rode upstairs to Schyler Knott, who had five rooms on the seventeenth floor, with windows that seemed to wrap around New York. Isaac could see the Hudson and the Empire State and the heartless country of glass towers that had been put up by the barons.
Schyler wore a red polo shirt. He was an investment banker who’d retired at thirty-eight to devote himself to landmarks and the Christy Mathewson Club. There was an incongruity about all this. He looked like some Robert Redford who’d missed his chance on the screen.
Schyler was a health nut. He prepared a pitcher of carrot juice for Isaac and himself. Isaac hated carrots, but he had to drink. His lips turned orange.
“Schyler, I want you back on Landmarks.”
“What’s the point? I’m tired of sitting with those real-estate sharks.”
“I’ll chop off their heads. We’ll have a whole new commission.”
“It will come to the same thing. Isaac, they’re ready to tear down Emeric Grays.”
“Yeah, I heard about that fiasco on Fifty-sixth. The pharaohs can fuck themselves. They’re not getting that parcel.”
“Did you ever read the first New York City Master Plan? It’s a remarkable document, written in ’t
wenty-nine. It wouldn’t tolerate pharaohs without a vision. No builder could interfere with the integrity of a neighborhood or destroy a sense of the past. Isaac, that’s how we breathe. Every stone is our second skin. And when we kill one or two Emeric’s, it’s an act of self-mutilation.”
“I love Emeric,” Isaac said, between sips of carrot juice. “He’s my hero. I know the exact spot where that trolley car ran him down.”
“Your City, Isaac, is a landmark that’s about to die. We had our pyramids, and we lost them.”
“Like the old Penn Station,” Isaac said.
“I could tell you about reservoirs and banks and music halls and the first Madison Square Garden … Antonio Gaudí was supposed to build a skyscraper in New York. Can you imagine what it would have been like? Ever been to Barcelona, Isaac? Ever see Gaudí’s Church of the Sagrada Familia? It was never finished.”
The king was ashamed to admit that he’d never been to Barcelona. But he remembered that Gaudí, like Emeric, had been hit by a trolley car.
“Isaac, Gaudí’s skyscraper would have been a tall fun house, a Coney Island cathedral. But he couldn’t get it financed. So it sits like a ghost in our dreams, one more phantom building.”
“We’ll find a new Gaudí,” Isaac said.
“It’s too late,” Schyler said.
“But we’ll fight the pharaohs, and we’ll win.”
“And live with a shrinking tax base, Mr. Mayor?”
“I don’t care,” Isaac said.
“I’m your white elephant. I had to go, or the realtors would all scream. ‘Schyler wants to landmark every stone.’ And I would …” He shut his eyes, as if he were practicing some incantation. Isaac could feel Schyler’s face begin to close. The king would get nothing more from Schyler Knott.
“Would you consider some other chairmanship?” he said.
“In your administration? Isaac, I wouldn’t fit. I’m a purist. I can’t make compromises. I’m better off with the Christys.”
“But you can’t contemplate Ty Cobb and Shoeless Joe Jackson for the rest of your life … come in as one of my deputies.”
Schyler clutched his forehead. “Please … no more chairmanships, no more commissions. I belong with Shoeless Joe.”
6.
Isaac was out in Indian country again, off the charts. Sweets had a special task force out looking for the mayor-elect. But Isaac wouldn’t seem to surface. He loved to live in some no-man’s-land of his own making. He was like a medieval character inventing every kind of quest. Sweets had all the armories and shelters combed and checked. He stationed a man outside Isaac’s apartment, Isaac’s cafeteria on Delancey Street, Isaac’s other haunts. He went up to the self-enclosed castle land called Tudor City and visited Isaac’s daughter, Marilyn the Wild, and Isaac’s son-in-law and official police escort, Joe Barbarossa. Tudor City reminded Sweets a little of the Hollows. It wasn’t a community of black millionaires, and it hadn’t been a camping ground for the Continental Army. But it had its own restaurant and market and bicycle shop, and anyone with enough money could camp in Tudor City for the rest of his life and never climb off that hill of apartment houses …
Marilyn offered him a cup of dark coffee and some peach cobbler she’d learned how to make during one of her many marriages. Barbarossa was her tenth husband. She’d been in love with Isaac’s original angel, Manfred Coen, aka Blue Eys. She wanted to run off with Coen. Isaac wouldn’t allow it. He’d hurled Coen into his war with the Guzmanns, a gang of Peruvian pimps, and Coen got killed. Marilyn never forgave him … until she met Joe, another blue-eyed orphan, crazy in the head. Barbarossa played pingpong with a white glove on his hand. The hand had been burnt while Barbarossa was in Saigon.
“Isaac’s MIA again,” Sweets said.
Marilyn wrinkled her nose. “I don’t get it.”
“He’s missing in action.”
“What action? My father’s not in the middle of a war.”
“But he’s the mayor-elect. He can’t keep disappearing inside the elephant’s ass.”
“He wouldn’t be Isaac if he didn’t disappear.”
“But it’s less than four weeks to his coronation.”
“And two weeks to Christmas,” Marilyn said. “So what?”
“I’m responsible for him, Mrs. Barbarossa.”
“You drank my coffee. You can call me Marilyn.”
“Joey,” Sweets said. “You’re his escort. You weren’t supposed to let him out of your sight.”
“He’s no minor,” Barbarossa said.
“Yeah, he’s the mayor-king and the Pink Commish.”
“That’s the problem,” Marilyn said. “My father has too many titles. A king’s business is hard enough to define. But he’s fallen into the crack between City Hall and Police Plaza. He isn’t mayor yet, and he still dreams like a police commissioner. It’s a bitter month for dad.”
“I have to protect your father, Ms. Marilyn. That’s my job.”
“But he has the right of any civilian to remain anonymous.”
Sweets winked at Joe. “I’d like to bring her into the legal department at One PP.”
“Three of my husbands were lawyers,” Marilyn said.
“I give up,” Sweets said. “Joey, will you help me find the king?”
Sweets had his third coffee and left. Barbarossa put on a lumber jacket.
“Joe,” Marilyn said. “Isaac needs this time. He’s like a wounded bear.”
“Ah, I won’t push him,” Barbarossa said. “I’ll check his hideouts and see …”
“Darling,” she told him, “please don’t turn up dead.”
“I’m not Blue Eyes.”
“I didn’t mean Blue Eyes … I meant this mad business about the Knickerbocker Boys and those poor homeless men.”
“I’m not homeless, but I’ll have to take a risk. Crazies are crazies.”
He kissed Marilyn, and the two of them swayed in their living room, which opened upon the East River and Roosevelt Island and the U.N. And Marilyn had to admit that this tenth husband of hers did remind her of Blue Eyes. He was quiet and dangerous and gentle, but never dangerous with her. He was like all pingpong players, demented and in love with a little white ball.
Barbarossa stood under the Williamsburg Bridge. It was the king’s favorite haunt, a tiny patch of Sheriff Street where he’d been glocked a year ago by a crazy police captain. Isaac had lain in a coma more than a month, dreaming of some lost baseball team, the New York Giants of 1944, and its star outfielder, Harry “Bomber” Lieberman, who disappeared into the Mexican leagues in 1946. The king came out of his coma and couldn’t seem to recover from Harry’s fall. But it was the bridge, the bridge, that concerned Joe. He’d hoped that Isaac would be loitering about in his bum’s clothes. The king had played here as a boy, had bartered ration stamps so he could buy gifts for his sweetheart, Anastasia, now Margaret Tolstoy. It was Isaac’s magic place. But there was no Isaac under the bridge, just a raw December wind and a pair of homeless men who hadn’t even heard of the king.
Barbarossa trudged to Isaac’s favorite Newyorican restaurant. The bum wasn’t at his table, gobbling white rice and black beans. Joe went up and down Manhattan in his blue Plymouth. He crossed into Brooklyn, tried coffeehouses on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx. The big bear had to drink his cappuccinos. But Joe couldn’t uncover a sign of Isaac. He gave up. And to relax his nerves, he drove down to Columbus Avenue and stopped at Schiller’s, the last pingpong club in Manhattan. Joe had lived at the club until he got married. It had been his headquarters. He’d inherited Coen’s table. A Cuban-Chinese bandit had killed Coen here, in the middle of a pingpong match. Joe had fallen in love with Marilyn at the same table. She’d come on a pilgrimage to where Coen had been shot … and met Barbarossa.
Joe hadn’t seen Schiller in months. He couldn’t even remember where his pingpong paddle was, he’d been so occupied with Marilyn and with Isaac’s election campaign. He felt like a fucking stranger. The club was booming. All five
tables were occupied, even Coen’s table. The kibbitzers recognized him right away. “Joey, Joe …”
Schiller wasn’t with them. He was at the fifth table, an old man with a rope around his middle, the Columbus Avenue philosopher. There was a scraggly man in gym shorts at the far end of Coen’s table, playing with a Butterfly bat. The guy had irregular strokes. He hopped around like a bear. It was the king, Isaac Sidel. And Barbarossa was baffled.
Schiller despised Isaac, blamed him for Coen’s death.
“Schiller,” Joe said, “I can see you have a new friend.”
The old man shrugged his shoulders. “What can I do? I have to take in the homeless.”
“He’s the fucking mayor-elect.”
“That’s what I mean. A mayor who has to move into a mansion is a mayor without a home.”
“That’s wonderful,” Joe said, “but what about the memory of Blue Eyes?”
The old man started to sniffle. “There’s a time to mourn and a time to forget. Ask the kibbitzers. Isaac came here, got down on his knees, and begged my forgiveness. So I forgive.”
“Dad,” Barbarossa shouted to Isaac, “is that true?”
“Scram,” Isaac said. “I’m practicing my strokes.”
“And I am going crazy,” Barbarossa said.
“Joey, you shouldn’t have abandoned us,” Schiller said.
“I didn’t abandon … I got married. I’m a cop. I had to guard my fucking father-in-law … dad, will you introduce me to your pingpong partner?”
“That’s King Carol,” Isaac said. “The champion of Roumania. Carol’s my coach.”
King Carol was a thug in his fifties who had formidable strokes. He could have been a champion. How could Joe really tell? Carol had a mustache with scars down the middle, white spots where no hairs would grow. It lent him the look of an athletic Satan; the champ of Roumania had knotty, muscular legs. He shook Barbarossa’s hand. He also was playing with a Butterfly. Joe preferred the Stiga, which had a heavier handle. But he’d been the unofficial champion of Saigon, nothing more. He couldn’t have matched the Roumanian’s strokes.
“King Carol,” Joe said, but he couldn’t even finish his sentence. Sweets and Wig arrived, right upon Barbarossa’s back.
Little Angel Street (The Isaac Sidel Novels) Page 4