Little Angel Street (The Isaac Sidel Novels)

by Jerome Charyn

  There were five hundred men, women, and children waiting for Nina Anghel. She moved among them, signed autographs, welcomed their touch. She went into the basement, where she changed into her pingpong clothes. People clapped when she emerged, her red hair just as unruly. Nina didn’t have any women challengers, only men. She played the champion of Paris, a left-hander whom she wore down after several minutes. Her strokes were stronger than his. Her timing was perfect. They called her the redheaded lioness, la lionne rousse. She was docile, narcoleptic, almost numb when she wasn’t behind a table. Her features were without charm or animation. But she turned lithe at the table. Her body did a ferocious ballet.

  Quentin Kahn arrived in the middle of the match with all his cameras, like some perturbed photojournalist.

  “Murder in the cemetery, huh? Margaret, you were supposed to watch.”

  “The guy had a gun. He was going to shoot Nina Anghel.”

  “All right. You disarm the mother. But did Michael have to break his neck? He gets rid of an entire network of Hungarians. That’s wholesale slaughter. We could get kicked out of the country. I’m not a French national. And neither are you.”

  “You weren’t so worried about wholesale slaughter at the Ali Baba.”

  “It wasn’t wholesale,” Quentin said. “And we could be particular. Michael’s princelings showed up one at a time. We had our own chauffeurs and graveyards, and a sensational cover story.”

  “The Knickerbocker Boys.”

  “It still makes me laugh. King Isaac sleeping at a shelter.”

  “Don’t misjudge his eccentricities. He’ll shut you out of the real-estate market.”

  “Impossible. I have Billy the Kid on my side.”

  He stooped and took photographs of Nina at the table. Then Margaret whisked her back to their rooftop apartment on the boulevard Montparnasse. Black Michael had bought the entire building. It was a sandstone marvel that had been put up in 1907. Michael had become preoccupied with Paris real estate. He was sinking all his money into stone.

  Michael sat in the kitchen eating a steak when Nina and Margaret and Quentin Kahn returned from the rue Pascal. Michael was naked.

  “Cover yourself, for God’s sake,” said Quentin Kahn.

  “Are you bashful, Quent? Worried about Margaret’s honor?”

  “It’s the girl. Nina’s never been with a man.”

  “I’m her coach. We’ve taken steambaths together. I’ve seen hers. She’s seen mine.”

  “Michael, don’t say that.”

  Margaret had to laugh at this Don Quixote of the yellow condoms who was so protective of Nina Anghel.

  Nina went to take a bath. She didn’t like to shower at pingpong clubs. She preferred to sit and soak.

  Black Michael continued eating his steak.

  “I’m serious,” said Quentin Kahn, circling the kitchen table. “I won’t have promiscuous murders like that. I’ll pull out of the deal.”

  “And strand yourself, Quent? Without Nina? Without your little orphan army?”

  “I’ll sell the Ali Baba.”

  “You will not,” said Black Michael. He’d been Quentin’s guru once upon a time. Now they were partners with a bitterness between them. Quentin wanted to legitimize himself. Michael wanted to remain Michael.

  “The ambulance runs are over, you hear? I’m getting out.”

  Black Michael abandoned his steak and walked out of the kitchen. Quentin began to sob very softly.

  “Margaret, I can’t handle it. I’m afraid of Michael. I can’t handle it. He’ll kill everybody. Me. You. Nina.”

  “Let him try,” Margaret said. She was sick of all these millionaires. She didn’t even have a bank account. She was Frederic LeComte’s personal siren, seducing criminals for the Justice Department. She slept with Quentin Kahn, endured his little orgasms while she dreamt of Isaac, the ultimate gypsy, who couldn’t find a home for himself. She was attracted to orphans. Isaac’s dad had left him to become a painter in Paris. Joel Sidel. Margaret even had Joel’s address on the rue Vieille-du-Temple. But she was reluctant to visit him, too shy. She would have felt like some daughter-in-law.

  She went into her own room, locked the door, took off her wig. She was like an amnesiac who kept coming out of long sleeps to remember the worst details of her life. Starving in Odessa, on Little Angel Street. Uncle Ferdinand slept in a military tunic, with all his medals from the Gestapo and the German High Command. He’d run out of silver and gold and couldn’t even hire a maid. All he could do was swipe orphans from the local asylum and eat them. Margaret ate them too. The Nazis had given her a nickname. Lady Macbeth.

  They took the TGV train to Bordeaux. Black Michael, Margaret, Nina, and Quentin Kahn, the four musketeers. Michael was attacked on the train. He hadn’t eliminated all the Hungarians. Two emigres appeared in baggy coats, tried to kidnap Nina.

  “Monsieur,” they said. “We would like to see some cash.”

  “Gladly,” Michael said, getting into the game.

  He searched the pockets of his overcoat, plucked out dollars, francs, and deutschemarks, and while their eyes were on the money, he punctured their throats with the bodkin he’d also carried in his coat. It was Margaret who had to clean up the blood and help Michael escort the two dead Hungarians off the train at Bordeaux.

  “Idiot,” she told him. “Couldn’t you let them keep the money … for a little while?”

  “No.”

  He made a phone call. She walked her dead man outside the station. An ambulance was parked across the street. Quentin Kahn blinked at the ambulance and started to cry.

  “This has to stop.”

  Nina Anghel seemed oblivious of everything. She sang to herself on the way to the exhibition, which was held at a sports palace in the suburb of La Bastide. Michael wouldn’t let her give any interviews. He wasn’t edgy. He wanted to distance himself from the dead Hungarians.

  Nina destroyed Bordeaux’s best player while sitting in a chair. Michael collected the exhibition fee. He hired a car and drove the musketeers to Toulouse. He picked an obscure hotel in the Arab quarter, where they hid for a day. Margaret watched the Arab men from her window. They would march in narrowing circles, retracing each of their own steps. There were no women in the street.

  Nina played at a club on the rue de Languedoc.

  Margaret still had the feeling that Isaac would come, that she’d look up and see his shadow across the pingpong table. But there was only Nina Anghel, growing tired of her desolation. No one could really challenge her, force her to work at the table.

  The musketeers left Toulouse.

  They drove to Carcassonne. Nina Anghel fell in love with the ramparts, the old medieval walls. They had dark, delicious coffee inside the ramparts and little almond cakes called le petit carcassonnais, molded to look like a castle. Nina Anghel couldn’t live without them. She’d hike the hilly streets with Margaret and a petit carcassonnais, while the two other musketeers plodded behind them, Quentin mopping his forehead with a handkerchief.

  “Aunt Margaret, tell me a story … about Carcassonne.” She remembered the little tales Uncle Ferdinand had told her about an Arab princess who’d once lived inside the walls. Dame Carcas.

  The Arabs had conquered the old Roman fort of Carcas in 725. Balaak, their king, was a merciful man. He didn’t tear out the hearts of his prisoners and feed on them. He didn’t hang any defeated warriors from the walls. He taught the new science of mathematics to the prisoners’ sons. He married one of his own princesses, made her his Dame Carcas. She was as kind and as gentle as the king. She swore that no one would ever starve while she was there. But Charlemagne, king of all the Franks, grew jealous of Balaak. He arrived with his army at the bottom of the walls and demanded that Balaak surrender to the Franks. Balaak hurled hot oil down on their heads. Charlemagne ground his teeth. He moved his army out of range of Balaak’s oil and sat for five years.

  “That’s preposterous,” Nina said. “No king would ever sit for five
years. He’d get holes in his pants.”

  “Shhh,” Margaret said. “Who’s telling the story?”

  The Arabs began to starve during Charlemagne’s seige. Their wells dried up. They ran out of drinking water. Balaak died, and so did most of his followers. At the end of five years only two creatures remained inside the ramparts: Dame Carcas and one tiny pig. Dame Carcas built dummy soldiers out of straw, placed them in strategic corners, and crouched from wall to wall, shooting arrows at Charlemagne. She let the pig swallow the last kernels of corn she had, and tossed it down to the Franks. The pig’s belly split during the fall and most of the corn rained on Charle magne, who continued grinding his teeth. If the Saracens had enough provisions left to stuff their pigs with corn, then Charlemagne had accomplished nothing with his siege. He rode away from the walls. Half mad from having lived among the dead so long, Dame Carcas stood on the ramparts and blew into one of Balaak’s horns. But Charlemagne was a little deaf and failed to hear the horn. His own squire said, “Sire, Carcas sonne.” Carcas is calling. But the king wouldn’t return to the walls.

  Nina didn’t care about Dame Carcas. She wept for Charlemagne, the deaf king who was fooled by some silly kernels of corn. She went to the little house Michael had bought on the rue St. Jean. Black Michael was always buying houses. The house had its own printing press and little post office and a mountain of magazines. Pingpong Power. She couldn’t even take a bath. She had to put on her skirt and rush out to the big chateau, where she was scheduled to play. It was only a castle inside a bigger castle called Carcassonne.

  “Aunt Margaret,” she asked, “what’s my salary?”

  “Shhh,” Margaret said. “Michael is buying you a house.”

  “I’m not a baronness. I don’t need a house.”

  A pingpong table had been set up in the castle’s main hall. And Nina kept hearing in her own head, Sire, Carcas sonne. Her opponent wasn’t even a legitimate champion, just a local boy who had entered a couple of tournaments.

  “Aunt Margaret,” she said, “I’ll need a mask.”

  “What?”

  “A bandage. A handkerchief. Anything.”

  Nina grabbed Margaret’s handkerchief and turned it into an eyeless mask.

  “Christ,” Margaret said, “you can’t play that boy blindfolded. You’ll never survive the match.”

  But Margaret hadn’t counted on Nina Anghel’s private sonar. Nina could position her bat according to the echo of the ball coming off the table. The boy stood like a straw soldier. He couldn’t solve the mystery of Nina’s mask. He’d offered to play Nina Anghel, not a blindfolded witch.

  The boy left his bat on the table and ran away in the middle of the match. The crowd had its own cruel agenda. It started to laugh.

  And then a man picked up the boy’s bat. His shadow spilled onto the table. It belonged to Margaret’s troubadour, Isaac Sidel.

  “Miss Nina,” he begged with his gypsy eyes. “I’d like to finish the match.”

  22.

  The king wasn’t wearing sneakers. He hadn’t intended to play Nina Anghel. But the boy’s bitter duel had touched him. And so he volunteered himself. Isaac the jester. He’d stashed Harwood and Brother William in Gracie Mansion, where they wouldn’t be hurt. He’d gone into the Ali Baba, prepared to beat Nina Anghel’s schedule out of Eddie Royal. But the jockey had vanished. Isaac returned to his primary source: Pingpong Power. The city of Carcassonne was mentioned a little too often. It had to have some significance beyond the beauty of its walls. Isaac took the gamble. He flew to Barcelona, where his old enemies, the Guzmanns, had gone. He wondered how many Guzmanns were still alive. But he never even left the airport. He found a plane to Montpellier, then a bus to Carcassonne. The king could have rented a car. But he was nervous, had too much on his mind.

  He crossed the Pont Vieux on foot, with its lanterns and crowns of metal lace, and climbed up to the medieval city. The king had to smile at his quick reward. There were posters advertising Nina Anghel. He’d preceded her by two days. He took a room at a tiny hotel on the place du Grand Puits, across from the castle where Nina would exhibit her strokes.

  He had dinner on the rue du Comte Roger, sucked up a whole bottle of red wine. He couldn’t afford a Pomerol, like Quentin Kahn. The king had a Cahors. He had a salad of green and yellow beans, some salmon trout with steamed potatoes, and a pear tart. He devoured two baskets of bread, sat over a cup of espresso and a tiny brick of chocolate. It was like half a honeymoon, the king without his bride. He had no bride.

  He wandered into the castle, hid among the spectators, and his heart beat like an ape when he saw his Anastasia, Margaret Tolstoy in a red wig, accompanied by Quentin Kahn and King Carol. With them was Nina Anghel, dressed to the nines. She’d come to play pingpong in a lovely little skirt. He was going to surprise them all after the match, knock out Black Michael’s teeth. But his plans were ruined after Nina put on her blindfold and humiliated that boy, mocked him, belittled his adventure of dueling with a world champion.

  His knees didn’t shake once he held the bat in his hand.

  “Who are you?” Nina asked under the blindfold.

  “A friend of Black Michael’s,” he said.

  And they started to duel with the bats. Isaac served the ball. Nina whipped it back at him, found a hole in his forehand. You have to love the ball, you have to love the ball, Isaac muttered to himself. This ball was yellow, like the condoms at the Ali Baba. Isaac wondered if the red lioness could read colors through her mask. What had ever happened to white pingpong balls?

  The king served again. Nina ate him up. But he was one of Michael’s wards, like Nina herself. He learned to love this yellow ball. He looked for Nina’s weaknesses. He couldn’t find one.

  Nina served. Isaac cut under the ball, but she slapped it back into his face. She served again. Isaac pushed the ball over the net with a light kiss. She hesitated for a moment, could hardly hear the ball. She lunged a little too late. The ball struck her handle, and Isaac had his first point.

  He broke Nina’s game, hitting as softly as he could. Isaac’s touch was outside her registers. Nina’s sonar had failed.

  The king caught Margaret’s eye. There was a coldness in her face. She was angry at him for undermining Nina Anghel. He didn’t care. He lobbed a slow, light bomb of a serve. Nina missed the ball, but Isaac was the good policeman. He could sniff some intrusion. A man in a blue hat had violated the perimeters of the game, had come a little too close. He was aiming a small silver gun at Nina’s heart. Isaac tossed his bat. It knifed into the air and thwacked the man’s forehead. The gun fell out of his hand. Isaac leapt over the table and tackled him. But the man in the blue hat was lifted out of Isaac’s arms. Black Michael stood above Isaac, cradling the man in his own arms, while Margaret exhorted the spectators. “Calmez-vous, calmez-vous.”

  Then Isaac himself was lifted off the floor and hustled out of the castle with Quentin and Nina and Margaret and Black Michael, who was clutching Isaac and the man in the blue hat.

  “Who is he?” Isaac growled.

  “A Hungarian.”

  Isaac noticed something once they were away from the castle’s walls. The Hungarian was dead. Michael had strangled him in all that confusion. A wind seemed to carry them down to the rue St. Jean. They entered Michael’s house with the dead Hungarian, whom Michael sat in a chair. Quentin bolted the door and aimed the Hungarian’s silver gun at Isaac. “We’ll have to do him.”

  But Michael sprang at Quent, slapped him across the face. “Shut up!”

  Quentin wiped the blood away from his mouth. Michael hadn’t even bothered to take the gun out of Quentin’s hand.

  “We’ll still have to do him. He can’t come here like that. He knows too much. He’s a pest.”

  “That’s delicious,” Michael said. “Spill out your life story. I’m sure Nina will love it.”

  “She has to grow up,” said Quentin Kahn.

  Margaret took Nina into another room.

&nbs
p; “King Carol,” Isaac said. “Is that the name you adopted for me, so we could talk king to king?”

  “Yes, little father, it was tailor-made.”

  “I’ll bet. And I’m the dupe of dupes.”

  “On the contrary. We had to be careful. We created the Knickerbocker Boys so you would keep out of our hair.”

  “You’re a gambler,” Isaac said. “Like me.”

  “But I have a certain advantage. I was trained by generals before I was twelve. I had German masters, then Russian masters …”

  “Lemme guess. LeComte is running you. Your masters are American right now.”

  “Not really,” Michael said. “Oh, I sell information. But Moscow doesn’t trust Bucharest. So my secrets are very few.”

  “But you’re a walking gold mine. A colonel in the Securitate. Justice lets you hump Ceausescu blind. And if you happen to kill some of Ceausescu’s palace people along the way, no one’s gonna cry. Not Ceausescu. Tell me, Michael, what is the Securitate’s cut? Twenty percent? More?”

  Michael smiled.

  “You shouldn’t have factored me into your fucking scheme,” Isaac said, staring at the printing press and the stacks of Pingpong Power. “You don’t print in New York or L.A. or Paris. You print here. But why Carcassonne? It’s a tourist trap, a little wedding cake of a town.”

  “With perfect frosting,” said Black Michael.

  “Yeah,” Isaac said. “Throw the hounds off your track. A company with world headquarters in Carcassonne.”

  “I thought you’d appreciate it.”

  “Michael,” said Quentin Kahn, with blood in his mouth. “You’re telling him too much. He’s nosy.”

  “But I can’t brainstorm with you, Quent. You’re not a policeman. You’ve never even killed a man. You’re good at moving money … and taking pictures of Nina. Go on, you have a pistol. Shoot Sidel between the eyes. I won’t stop you. We’ll bury him with the Hungarian. And you can caucus with Papa Cassidy and pick an emergency mayor. Shoot him!”