Little Angel Street (The Isaac Sidel Novels)

by Jerome Charyn

  Isaac traced the arc of that bird in his own head. Will White, Will White. And he fell upon the saddest revelation in his life. He knew Will and Sam Wise and Herman Long and Tobias Little. They were all players out of the nineteenth century. That’s why the names had been so fucking familiar.

  Isaac’s little auditorium at the Sheraton Centre was packed. His was the most popular seminar in the whole MLA. He drank coffee with the profs. But he was dying to look at his baseball almanac, confirm his suspicions about Will White.

  His hands were shaking when he returned to Rivington Street. He could barely hold the almanac. Tobias Little played for Louisville in 1887. Jay Penny was a third baseman in the Players League, which only lasted one year: he arrived and vanished in 1890. Sam Wise won thirty-seven games for the Toledo Americans in 1884. Jesse Nichols was a journeyman catcher with Brooklyn, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia in the 1890s. Will White pitched six hundred and eighty innings for the Cincinnati Nationals in 1879. Monte Ward was an infielder-outfielder-pitcher for Providence and New York. Herman Long was a hard-hitting shortstop. Morris deMorris was a player-manager with Buffalo for half a season. And there was also a Long John Silver in the National League. He played for the Chicago Cubs. Even an Alexander Hamilton, who played with Columbus and Cleveland.

  The list was complete. Isaac had mapped all the Knickerbocker Boys. He had bitter feelings in his blood. The Knickerbocker Boys were an antiquarian’s code and a personal kite to the king. Only one man could have sent that kite. A fellow antiquarian. It had to be Schyler Knott. Schyler was descended from the early Dutch farmers of New Amsterdam. His forebears had once owned a piece of the Bowery. And Schyler owned buildings all over the place. He was the landlord and president of the Christy Mathewson Club. His vision of baseball ended around 1940. Harry Lieberman was a Christy, but he couldn’t be included in the Christys’ own annals. He’d joined the Giants in 1943. He was a couple of years too late.

  Isaac had never heard Schyler talk of hoboes and mongrels and niggers and kikes. And he couldn’t conceive of Schyler murdering homeless men. That wasn’t the mark of a preservationist, but it was Schyler who’d invented that dream team of nineteenth-century players. Nine men and one manager, Morris deMorris.

  The king went to Schyler’s house on Horatio Street. But Schyler wasn’t there. “He’s gone, Mr. Mayor,” the doorman said. “Packed his bags … told me to collect his mail.”

  “When will he be back?”

  “Mr. Knott didn’t say.”

  The king walked uptown to the Christy Mathewson Club. But its doors were closed. The club was being renovated and wouldn’t open again until Isaac was crowned as mayor-king. Isaac had to ride the “A” train to Washington Heights, where the Bomber lived alone in a very long retirement. Harry had had a mujer in Mexico and a baby girl. The girl died of the measles and Harry came back to New York without the mujer, did odd jobs, and banished himself to a couple of rooms on Fort Washington Avenue. He was the Christys’ watchman and bailiff, and he helped coach the Delancey Giants, Isaac’s baseball team in the Police Athletic League. But Isaac wasn’t close to the Bomber, and Schyler was. The patrician had befriended Harry, had made a home for him at the club. It wasn’t only the bond of baseball. Perhaps Schyler could appreciate a man who hid from his own past.

  The king didn’t have such a talent. Harry was his hero. And he couldn’t stop dreaming of Harry’s home runs.

  The Bomber lived in a walk-up near a tiny park with a stone pingpong table. Isaac listened to the clack of the ball and then climbed upstairs to Harry and knocked on the door. Harry let him in, and Isaac had to keep from crying. The Bomber was a gray-necked boy. He’d grown old around Isaac, but he had that agile innocence of someone who belonged in center field.

  “Bomber,” Isaac said, and he did start to cry, because Isaac’s own innocence was linked to Harry’s. They were like a pair of icemen frozen to 1944, when Harry was the reluc tant star of the National League and Isaac had Anastasia and the New York Giants.

  “You can’t come in here,” Harry said, “if you won’t wipe your eyes.”

  The king didn’t have a handkerchief, and Harry had to lend him one. His apartment was as gray as the hair on his neck. There wasn’t a single memento on the walls, not one picture of Harry as a Giant.

  “Harry,” Isaac said, “do you remember that game with the Cubbies when you hit three home runs?”

  “I never hit three home runs in a game.”

  “Harry, I was there. It was July ’forty-four.”

  “I was in a slump most of July,” Harry said. “Now shut up about baseball.”

  “I didn’t mean anything, Harry. I was reminiscing a little.”

  “Reminisce on your own time, Mr. Mayor. What do you want?”

  Isaac sat in Harry’s living room on a chair that had lost its springs, so that he felt he was falling, falling into some eternity of a lost baseball league.

  “Schyler’s missing.”

  “Who says?”

  “Harry, he gives up his chairmanship on the Landmarks Commission, shuts down the Christys, and disappears from Horatio Street.”

  “That’s not a crime,” the Bomber said.

  “It is if he created the Knickerbocker Boys … Harry, do I have to spell it out? What is Schyler doing with a band of maniacs who kill homeless men?”

  There were flecks of blood in the Bomber’s eyes. “This town is falling to shit. I caught a bum in our cellar at the Christys. He turned our sink into a toilet.”

  “Harry, answer me.”

  “You could be wrong about Schyler.”

  “No. Ten Knickerbocker Boys. And they’re all antiquarians. Will White. Long John Silver. Monte Ward. Morris deMorris … that’s Schyler’s own fucking team.”

  “Schyler doesn’t have a team, Mr. Mayor. What if the Knickerbocker Boys belong to me?”

  “I don’t believe it. You’re the Bomber.”

  “Sure. Harry the hero. I hate Jews and colored people.”

  “Stop it,” the king said.

  “Arrest me, Mr. Mayor.”

  “I can’t. I’m a civilian, like Schyler and you.”

  “I hit on the homeless, I bombed them into hell.”

  “Ah, Harry you should have stayed in center field.”

  “Arrest me,” the Bomber said.

  Isaac started to leave. Harry twisted him around with his gigantic paws.

  “Arrest me … I’m confessing to a crime.”

  “You’re shielding Schyler.”

  “You think I couldn’t have dreamt up Monte Ward and all them guys?”

  Isaac wouldn’t answer. He thrust Harry’s hands away from him and walked out of that grim apartment that was like a quiet grave.

  10.

  He didn’t tell Sweets about his talk with the Bomber. Sweets wasn’t a cabalist or an antiquarian and wouldn’t have understood the enigma of nineteenth-century names. He could have had Wig and Barbarossa watch Harry around the clock, but he would have had to spend all his resources on the Bomber. He’d get to Schyler on his own. He still had informants and spies at One PP. He was the Pink Commish. He called a lady captain in the chief inspector’s office.

  “Marge,” he said, “two things. There’s a black pros at the Ali Baba. Calls herself Rita Mae. I’d like her pedigree. And I need a few personals on Schyler Knott, K-N-O-double T. He kicked himself off the Landmarks Preservation Commission. He never married, but I remember something about a broken engagement. Who was the girl?… thanks, Marge.”

  The king had picked Marge right out of the Academy, and Marge had remained his cadet, no matter who was PC. She was like his own intelligence unit within the walls of Police Plaza. Marge phoned him at the pingpong club. Isaac took the call in Coen’s closet.

  “Rita Mae Robinson,” Marge said. “Lives on Lenox. Has a fourteen-year-old boy, Harwood. He’s a crackhead.”

  “Does she have a steady beau?”

  “It’s hard to research her love life, boss. She�
�s a pros.”

  “What about Schyler Knott?”

  “All I could come up with was Schyler’s shrink. A certain Dr. Lillian Campbell, a psychiatrist with degrees from Columbia and Cornell. And guess what? Schyler’s been sleeping with the good doctor.”

  “He’s having an affair with his own fucking psychiatrist? How did you discover that, Marge?”

  “Shame on you, boss. You told us to keep a file on all of Rebecca’s people.”

  “Come on, Marge. I have to protect the commissioners from themselves. Some monkey could blackmail them. And the whole City would be compromised. How old is Dr. Campbell?”

  “Thirty-eight or -nine.”

  “Is she a looker?” Isaac asked. Marge was silent, and Isaac had to confess his sins. “Okay, I’m a chauvinist pig, but …”

  “Boss, she’s a knockout, a redhead with lots of freckles … should I undress her for you, Isaac?”

  “Stop that,” he said. “I’m your commander in chief.”

  “You are not. You’re a king without a crown, and a very bad boy. I have to run. Sweets will kill me if he finds out I’ve been talking to you.”

  Isaac made an appointment with Dr. Lillian Campbell, insisted on seeing her that same afternoon. He had to use all his weight as the mayor-elect. Dr. Campbell fit him in at five o’clock. The king had to smile. Dr. Campbell’s office was on Horatio Street. She had a penthouse in Schyler’s building. It sounded like incest to the king.

  His knees dipped when he saw the redhead. Marge hadn’t been wrong. Dr. Campbell was a knockout. She had intelligent cheekbones, an animal’s brooding eyes. She reminded him of Maureen O’Hara, an actress out of his childhood. It was like looking at a beauty with her whole face on fire. The king had to be careful. He couldn’t win any contest with Dr. Campbell. But he’d have to use his little trump card. Her love affair with her own patient.

  He sat on the patient’s couch in Dr. Campbell’s office, which looked out onto the terrace and a view of Wall Street and the Woolworth Building in the early winter dusk. Darkness seemed to fall like a folding bomb. Ali Baba, Isaac thought. The sky could have been the roof of some magical cave. The king would never recover from New York.

  “You’re here about Schyler, aren’t you?”

  “He’s vanished, Dr. Campbell. And I believe Schyler’s involved with the Knickerbocker Boys. He’s their ringleader … help me, Dr. Campbell. Bring him in.”

  “And conspire against my own patient, Mr. Sidel? Do you really think he would murder poor harmless men?”

  “I’m not sure. But the Knickerbocker Boys are his invention. They’re all professional baseball players from the nineteenth century. No one but Schyler could have composed that list.”

  “That makes him a minor-league poet, not a murderer.”

  “But if he’s cohabiting with murderers, then he’s their accomplice … or their stooge. Please. I don’t want to argue. Help me.”

  “I can’t give Schyler’s secrets away.”

  “I’m not asking for secrets. But you could tell me about his mental state. Was he depressed, Doctor? I mean, he quits the Landmarks Commission. He closes the Christys.”

  “There’s nothing mysterious about that. The club had to be overhauled. And he couldn’t sit on the same commission with a gang of realtors. He was bound to clash. You know Schyler’s sentiments. He’d landmark the living and the dead if he could.”

  “Doctor, you’re fencing with me. Schyler’s in trouble. I don’t want to pounce on him, but the cops will.”

  “Unless I talk to you. But I’m not talking.”

  Isaac was already defeated by her red hair. He grew mean. “Doctor-patient privilege, huh? Like some voodoo priest. But do you sleep with your other patients, Dr. Campbell?”

  She’d been leaning on her desk, poised like a magnificent statue, when she reached over to slap the king with all her might. His jaw rippled, and his body fell deep into the couch.

  “We were engaged once, Mr. Sidel, long before he was my patient. I haven’t slept with Schyler Knott in seven years. Does that satisfy you?”

  “Sorry,” the king said, holding his face.

  “You’re pitiful, like any bloodhound. But I did vote for you, Mr. Sidel. Schyler’s like a damaged Christ. Manhattan is his own particular cross. For him New York has no future, only a past. And Schyler lives in that past. But he wouldn’t kill for it. You’ll have to take my word.”

  “But people are dying around that stupid, racist banner of the Knickerbocker Boys. I don’t want to hurt him, Dr. Campbell. Ask him to meet with me.”

  Isaac scribbled his phone number at the pingpong club. Suddenly he began to shake. He’d have to move into the mansion in a couple of weeks. He couldn’t survive without the bargain counters of Orchard Street and the whiteness of a pingpong ball.

  He took the Seventh Avenue Express up to Harlem. He had to kiss two babies and shake hands with a little band of blind students. The king was recognized wherever he went. Crowds formed in his wake. He couldn’t promise anything. No one could predict whether there would be a windfall next week. The king might inherit a pauper’s mantle the moment he was sworn in as the City’s one hundred and seventh mayor.

  He passed a playground on Lenox Avenue, watched a young black man in enormous white sneakers shepherding four blue-eyed brats. The brats were holding hands and laughing in a language the king couldn’t understand. They had very blond hair and could have been “perfect” children out of some crazy genetics program. They looked about six or seven in their winter coats. They wore mittens. Isaac had a rage in him. The young man had to be Harwood, and his own mom, Rita Mae Robinson, was the den mother for Quentin Kahn’s Roumanian connection.

  The king could have been wrong. Suppose this wasn’t Harwood. And the brats were simple refugees. Isaac went up to the shepherd boy, who barely noticed him.

  “Harwood,” he said.

  The boy’s eyes were half closed. “Who wants him?”

  “Ali Baba … I’m a friend of Quentin Kahn’s,” said the king.

  “Quent owes me and my mama two hundred dollar. You got the money, mistah?”

  “Tomorrow,” Isaac said. “Tomorrow.”

  He didn’t try to steal the brats from Harwood. He didn’t run to Rita Mae. He didn’t go down to the Ali Baba and crack Quentin’s skull. He went to Jerry DiAngelis, lord of the Rubino crime family. The Rubinos ran New York. And Jerry was as much a king as Isaac or Cardinal Jim. Isaac had once been part of the Family, had been Jerry’s war coun selor, while he was the Commish. Isaac had sat in jail for being a little too close to the Rubinos. But he’d won his case in court. And now Jerry and his father-in-law, Izzy Wasser, the melamed, were almost Isaac’s enemies.

  The king stood outside the Baron di Napoli Club on Mulberry Street. He didn’t knock on the window. He waited. It was a long silent siege. Jerry DiAngelis came out in his fabulous white coat. Isaac looked like a pauper compared to that coat.

  “Don Isacco, what the fuck do you want?”

  “We have to talk.”

  “Then talk,” Jerry told him.

  “Not in front of LeComte and his sound trucks.”

  “Leave me alone. I’m retired.”

  “You’re five years younger than I am. And you’re worth about a hundred mil. You can’t afford to retire. Your own captains would chop you to pieces.”

  “Don’t discuss my Family,” the don said. They went to Ferrara’s, an enormous pastry shop on Grand Street that had become a tourist trap. Not even LeComte’s wizards could have wiretapped every table. But it was difficult to talk. People kept coming up to Isaac and Jerry and kneeling in front of the table. Jerry had to shout at them. “Jesus, can’t we have a coffee break?”

  The king had a cappuccino. And Jerry had a caffè tinto, black coffee with a single drop of milk.

  “Jerry, I can hurt you when I’m mayor, hurt you real bad.”

  “Fuckface, you come to me with threats? I’ll strangle you in Ferrara’s, in fr
ont of two hundred people.”

  “You own the Ali Baba,” Isaac said.

  “I own shit. I get a percentage of the gross. That’s my deal with Quentin Kahn. I don’t ask questions. He gives, and I take. And he’s smart enough not to make me suspicious.”

  “Did you know that he’s a scumbag, that he traffics in stolen children?”

  “Isaac, I told you, I get a piece of the cake, a big piece. I don’t disturb any of his rackets.”

  “You’d better think again, because LeComte has his own little shop right inside the Ali Baba. He’ll sink Quentin Kahn, and you’ll drown with him.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. Quentin has a rabbi, Don Isacco, and that rabbi isn’t me.”

  “Rabbis won’t be able to help him once LeComte starts to pounce. The man is warehousing blue-eyed children. I saw them, Jerry, with my own eyes. Lean on him a little.”

  “You lean,” Jerry said. “Quentin’s rabbi can take on LeComte.”

  And he walked out of Ferrara’s, leaving Isaac to pay the bill.

  11.

  The king was losing time. Days passed. Another homeless man was killed, with another note in his mouth. “Trash,” the note said. “All the men’s shelters are filled with homos.” There was the same list of Knickerbocker Boys, starting with Monte Ward. And the Crime Scene tecs couldn’t gather any clues. “One more Geronimo Jones,” they said.

  Isaac began to curse his own alias. Who the hell was dogging him? He had to go back into the Ali Baba, but LeComte’s black commandos would toss him out on his ass. So the king had to play Sherlock Holmes. He didn’t disguise himself as a bum. LeComte would have made him in half a minute.

  He stood in front of his mirror and penciled in a mustache. He looked like some Latino prince. He discovered an orange suit in one of the barrels on Orchard Street, and soon he looked like a pimp. He was anxious about what to call himself. People seemed to die around Isaac’s aliases. He didn’t want to create another corpse.