Little Angel Street (The Isaac Sidel Novels)

by Jerome Charyn

  He was polishing the ambulance when Wig arrived, caressing the car with his fingertips. It was Brother William who supplied him with most of the drivers, guards from the Seventh Avenue Armory and homeless men with fake IDs.

  “That you, Wig?” Archibald asked.

  “Lieutenant Wiggens himself, old man.”

  “Who’s an old man? I can still whip your ass.”

  “And if I closed my eyes and wished for it, I could play second base for the Brown Bombers.”

  “The Bombers don’t exist. I’m a walking scrapbook, the last goddamn Bomber who’s still alive, and I’m a young buck. Seventy-three. If diabetes don’t kill you, a bum heart will.”

  “Has Brother William been around?”

  “Hardly.”

  “Was the ambulance used yesterday, Arch?”

  “Not that I noticed.”

  “Arch, Miz Rita is dead. And I’m curious if she was carried into Brooklyn in your ambulance.”

  “I know she’s dead … but I didn’t drive her, Wig. I loved Miz Rita.”

  “How’d she get to Brooklyn, Arch?”

  “I took a long lunch,” Archibald said. “Somebody could have walked in and stole my wagon.”

  “Somebody like King Carol?”

  “I aint seen Carol in a month. I don’t much like him. But he has a key. A king can come and go.”

  “He aint a king,” Wig said. “He’s a hired killer and a secret cop from Bucharest who pretends he’s a pingpong champion.”

  “You’re the one who called him King Carol.”

  “That’s his fucking code name in America. He’s a mountain of piss.”

  Archibald started to laugh. “Water can’t make mountains.”

  “Yeah, old man. What about the monster waves at Coney Island? They’re bigger than a mountain.”

  “Coney’s different. Coney aint piss.”

  Wig couldn’t fight Archibald’s logic. Arch had come out of the nigger leagues. An infielder who never wore a glove.

  Wig drove to the Seventh Avenue Armory. His whole fucking head burnt with blue fire. Can’t black out, can’t black out, he mumbled like an incantation. Brother William wasn’t behind his glass cage. Wig didn’t need all the magic lure of the nigger leagues to figure who had brought the ambulance into Brooklyn. Brother William parked his own sister on Plymouth Street. William was the chief of Quent’s ambulance corps. He was hiding somewhere, holed up with whiskey and a white woman. He was scared to death of Carol.

  Wig walked deep into the shelter. There were no guards around, just miserable fuckers under their tents of dirty white sheets. Wig climbed upstairs to the little gallery where he found one of the guards, a honkey who worked hand in hand with William. Wilson Bright, a forty-year-old scavenger who robbed the homeless whenever he could. He was constantly reprimanded, but he couldn’t be fired. His brother was a deputy mayor. Wilson had been studying philosophy at Hunter College for half his life, but he couldn’t accomplish a single degree. He’d talk worthless white shit, and when he got bored he’d have sex with the nigger cleaning ladies or dietitians who’d come from Human Resources and plan meals that the homeless never got to eat. He carried a billy club for his own protection, and was Quentin’s main driver. He should have had a uniform, but the clothes he wore had been ripped off the backs of homeless men.

  Wilson was dozing with a book in his lap. Wig examined the cover. He saw the name Wittgenstein and woke Wilson with a brutal kick. The guard fell off his chair, groaned once, recovered the book, and climbed back onto the chair.

  “Wilson, what if I tore the book to pieces and made you swallow all that paper?”

  “I’d complain to my brother,” Wilson said.

  “Your brother’s with Rebecca Karp. He’ll be out on his ass in a couple of weeks. And where will you be?”

  “With the Parks Department. I passed the test.”

  “It won’t matter, Wilson. Haven’t you heard? I’m Sidel’s black angel. I’ll cancel your test. Who’s Wittgenstein?”

  “The greatest philosopher of the twentieth century. You couldn’t understand him. You don’t have the training.”

  “Well, summarize him for me. Like they do in Hollywood.”

  “You can’t summarize Wittgenstein.”

  “I’ll kick your head in, Wilson. What did he say?”

  “He said words are our only history. They’re pictures of life. And if we aren’t careful, the pictures will go away.”

  “Where’s Brother William?”

  “I haven’t seen him, Wig. Not for two days.”

  “And the ambulance?”

  “I’ve given up driving, Wig. I swear.”

  “Stop it! You’ve been carting Quentin’s corpses around. You helped William drive Rita into Brooklyn, didn’t you?”

  Wilson raised his billy, and Wig would have plucked it right out of Wilson’s hand if he had been a little less blind. The billy struck his shoulder. He socked Wilson once, and the guard fell off his chair again. Wig stumbled down from the gallery and managed to leave the men’s shelter. Wittgenstein, he muttered. Pictures of life.

  16.

  He woke to the image of a man struggling on a wall. This mother had bronze flesh and a hat of thorns. Wig was sharing a room with Jesus. He recognized nurses and nuns. He’d never been inside a Catholic hospital. He’d spent a month at Bellevue after he was shot in the head and two weeks at Harlem Hospital the first time he fell off a fire escape. Sweets kept calling him Icarus. Fucking Icarus. Wig had to look him up in a dictionary devoted to Greek myths. The Greeks didn’t have fire escapes. But they did have roofs. And a guy called Daedalus was trying to escape from an island called Crete. He built a pair of wings for himself and his son. Icarus. The wings were made of feathers and wax. Father and son flew down off the roofs and started to cross the sea. But Icarus climbed up near the sun and never even noticed that his wings were beginning to melt. He dropped into the sea and drowned. And Daedalus got all the way to Sicily without his son.

  But Wig was an Icarus who fell off roofs and survived. And he didn’t have a dad to build wings for him. He didn’t have a dad at all, none he could remember. But he did remember falling down a fire escape and landing on his ass in the dry sea of some backyard rubble. He’d relived half his life during that first fall, like a movie camera with images that exploded inside his head—Wig and his mama going to church, Wig making love to Rita Mae, feeling that luscious skin, the perfume of her armpits, Harwood at the door, not peeking, but wanting to be part of whatever his mama had with the wicked policeman. He started to cry. He’d buried his mama, but he couldn’t seem to mourn Rita Mae.

  He could smell a man’s shadow near him. He didn’t have to look up. It was the king.

  “How’d you find me, Brother Isaac?”

  There was a fistful of flowers in his face. The king had brought him dandelions from a Korean grocer. Wig could feel the remorse in Isaac’s eyes.

  “I didn’t know about you and Rita, Wig … I’m sorry. Joey found you near the shelter. I called Cardinal Jim. We got you a bed right away.”

  “Where am I?” Wig had to ask. He was wearing a blue gown.

  “At Mother Cabrini. The cardinal and all his monsignors have their annual checkups here. It’s mostly a hospital for priests … you should have told me that you’ve been having fainting spells.”

  “Is the Department going to pension me off after my next CAT scan?”

  “I’m not with the Department, Wig.”

  “But you did tell Sweets.”

  “He doesn’t know you’re at Mother Cabrini. But if the doctors say it’s dangerous for you to be a cop, I will have to tell him.”

  “Tell him what? Even God wouldn’t be a hundred percent if He was shot in the head. I can still walk the street … and climb fire escapes.”

  “Not right away. Who killed Rita? Was it Quentin Kahn?”

  Wig clutched the dandelions, took them out of Isaac’s hand.

  “Quent’s out of the c
ountry. At a pingpong tournament. In Yugoslavia.”

  “That’s some Yugoslavia,” Isaac said. “I just had lunch with him at the River Cafe.”

  “He could have left for Yugoslavia after lunch.”

  “Help me, Wig. Quent buys children from Eastern Europe. Rita becomes his kindergarten mistress, minds the children, and then Rita dies … with a needle in her neck. It’s the same M.O. as the Knickerbocker Boys, the same style, the same cancellation. But without a note.”

  “She didn’t deserve a note. Rita’s black. And she wasn’t homeless.”

  “Wig, did you ever hear of Schyler Knott? He’s the poet laureate of the Knickerbocker Boys.”

  “Sounds like a racist pig.”

  “No. That’s the problem. Schyler isn’t a pig. He was with Landmarks. And then he disappeared.”

  “Maybe he’s become an ambulance driver.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You are sort of brainless for a king. Quentin supplies the ambulance, which is more like a hearse. And he supplies the corpses. Homeless men. But these homeless men are Hungarians. That’s why nobody can ID them. They’re mules and babysitters. European honkeys who bring over a bundle of blue-eyed kids, but Quent never bothers about a return ticket. He lets your coach, King Carol, off them, and he creates this trash about the Knickerbocker Boys. It’s a scam, a smoke screen for his enterprises.”

  “But it’s not good business to waste the members of your own team. Word might get around. And Quent might find himself without a babysitter.”

  “What if the mules are damaged merchandise, what if they’re tainted somehow? And Quent is collecting money to kill them.”

  “Collecting from whom?”

  “I don’t know. Roumania. Bulgaria. The king of Egypt.”

  “Farouk was Egypt’s last king. And Farouk is dead.”

  “He could still be paying dollars to Quent from the grave. That’s how smart Quent is … Isaac, the Knickerbocker Boys were your roommates at the Seventh Avenue Armory. Quent stole the idea of Geronimo Jones from you.”

  “What roommates?”

  “Brother William. Wilson Bright … they’re all ambulance drivers.”

  “Who are the other Boys?”

  “Schyler Knott, maybe. King Carol. Quentin’s accountant, Eddie Royal.”

  “That crooked little jockey?”

  “Lemme finish my list. Carol. Eddie Royal. Quentin himself. And the old man who minds his ambulance. Archibald Harris.”

  Isaac’s eyes swelled out. “The ballplayer?”

  Wig chuckled behind the yellow flowers, but his head hurt. “You’re the cat’s ass, Brother Isaac. There isn’t the ghost of a ballplayer who could ever escape you.”

  “But Archie Harris isn’t a ghost.”

  “That’s right. Arch was with the nigger leagues. He never played the New York Giants.”

  “You’re wrong. The Brown Bombers played an exhibition game at the Polo Grounds. And they crippled the Giants. It was during the war. Archie Harris didn’t wear a glove.”

  “I know that.”

  “He’d catch ground balls between his legs. Hit two home runs and hardly swung his bat. Made a monkey out of New York.”

  “Arch has cataracts,” Wig said, feeling left out of all the history this king had in his head. “He can’t see for shit.”

  “I don’t get it. Brother William and Arch, two black men, and they’re Knickerbocker Boys. How can they believe in all that racist crap?”

  “Aw,” Wig said, “they’re deliverers. They move dead bodies around. They never get to see the notes. And even if they did, Arch is mostly blind and Brother William is illiterate.”

  “You hate my guts, Wig. Why are you telling me all this?”

  “You brought me flowers. And you didn’t snitch to Sweets. I sort of owe you a little …”

  “It’s more complicated than that. You knew about the Knickerbockers from the beginning. You could have stopped those murders, but you didn’t.”

  “Why should I give a damn about dead Roumanian mules?”

  “You’re a cop,” Isaac said.

  “Don’t you lecture me, Brother Isaac. You rob people, and—”

  “You were right on the edge, weren’t you, Wig? Almost a Knickerbocker Boy.”

  “Almost don’t count in a court of law.”

  “Where does Arch keep his ambulance?”

  “At the old firehouse on Eleventh. But you might not find him there. The Boys had to be desperate, or they wouldn’t have delivered Rita to Plymouth Street.”

  It was his own dead fox that tied him to Sidel. Rita. And he started to curse himself. He’d forgotten all about Har wood. He couldn’t ask the honkey to go and untie Harwood’s hands. Then Isaac would uncover Wig’s own little fortress on Convent Avenue.

  “Where’s Harwood?” Isaac asked like a fucking mind reader.

  “Harwood’s safe, Brother Isaac. I have him.”

  Isaac scribbled something on a scrap of paper and handed it to Wig.

  “You can reach me day or night at that number,” Isaac said, pointing to his pager.

  “Brother Isaac, I aint in that much of a hurry.”

  “Keep it. You can never tell.”

  And Isaac walked out of Wig’s hospital room. His back was hunched like a bear who was carrying half the weight of New York. He’d never last at Gracie Mansion. He’d need his own rocker after a couple of months. Wig didn’t have that white man’s sense of charity or justice. Loving people could get them killed. He found a telephone near his bed and dialed the firehouse. He’d have to ask a favor from Archie Harris. Wig couldn’t crawl out of bed to Convent Avenue. Arch would have to go and untie Harwood and sit him down inside the ambulance. The telephone rang and rang. The old man must have been deaf. Wig would have to tell Arch to move the firehouse or the ambulance before Brother Isaac started riding high on the Knickerbocker Boys.

  Someone picked up after the twentieth ring and said hello.

  Wig decided to play the fox. “Arch, is that you?”

  “Yeah,” the voice said. But it wasn’t Arch.

  “How’s the pitching arm?”

  “Fine, fine. Who is this?”

  “Geronimo Jones,” Wig said and hung up on whoever was impersonating Arch.

  17.

  Isaac returned to Schiller’s club. Carol was gone. Covering a tournament for Pingpong Power. He’d left a note for his pupil. “Never stop loving the ball. And don’t concentrate on your strokes. Remember, Isaac. Pingpong is a game of spiritual grace. Warm regards. King Carol.”

  Isaac crumpled the note and tossed it under his pingpong table. He couldn’t control his fury. The Knickerbocker Boys had been invented right inside that armory where he’d slept. He’d have to start punishing people. But a mayor-elect didn’t have his own proper war room. He dialed Rebecca’s deputy mayor and damage-control artist, Nicholas Bright, and asked him for a meeting up at the club. Bright was a thirty-six-year-old bachelor who behaved like an inspector general. He wasn’t a constable or a cop. He had only the power of recommendation. He wrote up reports about each of the City’s departments and declared what cuts ought to be made. Nicholas Bright didn’t even have his own secretary. He worked alone, without computers or telephones or much of a paper trail. He was a relentless keeper of information, cruel and efficient in his desire to get rid of waste and guard the City’s cash flow.

  Isaac had never bothered to meet Nicholas until now. He kept putting off the task of shaping his own government and deciding which of Rebecca’s deputies to swallow. Nicholas had thick eyeglasses and wore a drab butternut brown suit, like a subterranean creature who only surfaced when he had to.

  “Nicholas,” Isaac said, sitting the deputy mayor down at a card table in Schiller’s back closet that had served as a changing room when Manfred Coen was alive. “I’m afraid we’re enemies, you and I.”

  Nicholas was pale under his eyeglasses. His fingernails weren’t as clean as they should
have been. His shoes weren’t shined. Nicholas was a tactician who couldn’t seem to solve the problem of grooming himself.

  “Would you prefer that I resign?”

  “No, Nicholas. I intend to keep you on. You scare the pants off everybody. That’s good. You save us precious dollars. And you don’t have much allegiance to the Party.”

  “Then what makes us enemies?”

  “Your brother, Nicholas. I noticed him at the Seventh Avenue Armory. He was a rotten, swindling guard. But all the guards were swindlers, and they were on their best behavior while I was around. I lived at the armory for a week.”

  “That was clever, sir. Taking inventory.”

  “I needed a rest. But your brother deceived me. Did you know that he’s one of the Knickerbocker Boys?”

  “Sir,” Nicholas said, “I wasn’t altogether ignorant of Wilson’s pranks … about the ambulance, I mean.”

  “Jesus,” Isaac said, “I was police commissioner. I belonged to a crime family for a little while. And I’m the last guy in Manhattan to learn about the Knickerbocker Boys. It isn’t fair.”