Little Angel Street (The Isaac Sidel Novels)

by Jerome Charyn

  Nicholas attacked the Leviathan of New York City, chopped off whole departments, shuffled men and women around. But Isaac would start to dream whenever he had to examine the City’s books. He wasn’t like Nicholas. He couldn’t fight the Leviathan, claw by claw. The king had too many details inside his skull. He couldn’t stop thinking of that little Leviathan, Oskar. He would scan Oskar’s letters in the middle of a meeting and permit his budget people to talk until their cheeks turned blue. There would be a shortfall in fiscal eighty-six unless Nicholas continued to chop and chop.

  The Sidel administration began to find its very own shape. There was Becky Karp in the background. There was Nicholas and his brother Wilson, the ghostwriter who was sort of Isaac’s secretary. There was his bodyguard, Albert Wiggens, and two mysterious aides, a fat man called William and a boy with a runny nose. They would brew coffee, fix rebellious machines, arrange for homeless men and women to tour the mansion.

  Gracie was growing into a little Versailles. Isaac encouraged his chef to prepare a battery of lunches and dinners for the homeless. The king himself ate at these lunches. And his “democratic dinners” were soon a daily ritual. The cardinal would stand in line with the homeless and suck on a cigarette. He preferred Isaac’s table to the Four Seasons. He could wolf his lasagna and guzzle two glasses of wine.

  Billy the Kid came down from Albany to be photographed with all these beggars. He sat near Isaac with a paper plate and a plastic knife and fork.

  “Been waiting for you, Billy, waiting to give you this.” Isaac jumped up, pecked Billy between the eyes, and sat down again. “I always kiss a man before I fuck him over. I like to bring my enemies very close.”

  Billy’s hand was shaking. Isaac had to cut the lasagna for him, feed the governor like a boy.

  “You had Rita killed, didn’t you, Billy? You gave the order. You panicked. You had fucking presidential fever.”

  “You’re berserk. I could have you institutionalized, Sidel.”

  “I’d welcome it, Billy. I’ll take the bed next to your niece. Rose Leviathan-Smith.”

  “Shut your mouth.”

  “Judah was the cutout, the safety value. He was your own little mailman. He talks to Quentin Kahn, and Rita is dead. How could she have harmed you? Oskar was crazy about her. What did he write? I miss Aunt Rita. She was more like a mama than Rose could ever be. You son of a bitch.”

  “Not so loud, Sidel.”

  “Come on. No one’s listening. People love to eat.”

  “While you conduct a kangaroo court.”

  “I’m fond of kangaroos,” Isaac said. “My favorite animals. Did you ever see them fight? They can punch with their hands and feet.”

  “Sidel, let’s go upstairs to your study.”

  “No. I insist. I do all my dirty deals in the dining room.”

  “I’m your master, Sidel. I sit on the Financial Control Board. I can throw your City into continual darkness.”

  “Try,” Isaac said.

  Billy the Kid coughed into his napkin, stood up, and stepped out onto the mayor’s porch. Isaac finished his lasagna, had some coffee and cake, then joined Billy outside. The Gov had turned off all the lights. Isaac sat with him on the porch steps, watching a tiny whirlpool in the waters of Hell Gate. The governor’s lips were moving.

  “Can’t hear you, Billy. The wind is ripping too hard.”

  “I said blackmail.”

  “Now there’s a twist to the caper, your very own whirlpool, but I’ll strangle you, Billy, before I get sucked in.”

  “Oskar was lending them his pocket money, and then it became more than a loan. Rita brought them around, that fool brother of hers and the boy.”

  “William and Harwood.”

  “Exactly. Rose was in and out of the hospital. I would borrow Rita from Quentin, ask her to babysit whenever Rose was gone. There was nothing crooked about it. I paid her, of course.”

  “You didn’t need Rita. Oskar Leviathan could have stayed with you.”

  “That was impossible.”

  “Yeah. You’re a regular nomad. You shuffle from your mansion in Albany to your town house in New York. You have an army of chauffeurs and maids. And a wife, Billy. What about your wife? You couldn’t afford to advertise Oskar Leviathan, the lost boy who was slightly illegal. So you invited Rita into Rose’s house. Some rendezvous. Did you sleep with her, Billy?”

  “Once or twice.”

  “Cost Rita her life. And don’t start your blackmail stories. William and Harwood were always looking for cash. They would have robbed Rose’s faucets if they could. They rifled Oskar’s piggy bank, bullied him a little, and you tossed them out of the house. William, Harwood, and Rita. And then you got scared. The Democrats’ dark horse. You were dreaming Pennsylvania Avenue, the Rose Garden, the Lincoln Bedroom, one more mansion in your curriculum vitae. The White House, the bloody White House.”

  “Could have been worse,” said Billy the Kid. “Don’t you play pure at heart. You’ve bedded down with the Mafia. Your mistress is LeComte’s pet rattlesnake. And the angels you collect have a mediocre survival record.”

  “Manfred Coen.”

  “I’ll break you, Sidel, if you start to meddle. This talk never took place. I had nothing to do with Rita. She was Oskar’s governess for a while. That’s all you’ll get out of me.”

  Billy the Kid marched back inside, grabbed his coat, shook hands with some of the homeless men, and left the mayor’s house.

  Isaac crossed his legs in the cold and started to meditate. But he couldn’t reach the white glow of alpha. Coen could find alpha in a pingpong ball. Isaac couldn’t. But he could hear the slap of the porch door, feel a shadow sit down next to him in some kind of negative alpha, a soft dark glow. It was Becky Karp in her rocking chair.

  “Isaac, you’ll have to give the Gov what he wants.”

  “He had a friend of mine killed. Rita Mae Robinson.”

  “It makes no difference. You’re not a cop anymore. You owe your allegiance to him.”

  “He’s a psychotic prick.”

  “True. But that psychotic prick is the titular head of your Party. You can’t escape it, Isaac.”

  “Then I’ll escape him and the Party.”

  “My poor silly man,” said Rebecca, rocking above Isaac, who was still on the steps. “You’ll turn your life into a rough little game of the hounds and the hare. You can hide in your mansion, Isaac, but the hounds will get you. It will be a very slow kill. They’ll corner you, raise their hind legs to pee, cry at the moon, and tear your limbs. It could last for months. You won’t even feel yourself bleeding until it’s too late.”

  Isaac searched the dark of the porch for Rebecca’s eyes. He discovered two warm white spots. “Becky, will you be with the hounds or the hare?”

  “The hare, Isaac. But I can’t help you. The hounds will eat me alive.”

  27.

  The hounds arrived before the end of the meal, looking like real-estate barons. Judah, Jason, Papa Cassidy, and Quentin Kahn.

  “Gentlemen,” Isaac said to the first three barons. “I won’t talk to you in front of that piece of shit.”

  “Quentin is with us now,” said Papa.

  “He’s moved out of pornography,” said Jason Figgs.

  “But he’ll be sad without his yellow condoms.”

  “Isaac,” said Judah Bellow. “You closed the Ali Baba. He didn’t fight you, and he could have. But we must insist. You took something that belongs to him. A batch of personal letters. They’re his private property. Letters from a certain Oskar Leviathan.”

  “That’s lovely, Judah. A certain Oskar Leviathan who happens to be the grandnephew of Billy the Kid.”

  “You don’t have any proof,” said Jason Figgs.

  “Yeah, Jason. Boys can disappear just like Geronimo Jones … fuck all of you,” Isaac said. “I mean it. You can be the hounds, but you won’t catch shit.”

  “He’s hallucinating,” said Quentin Kahn. “Sidel likes to talk in h
is sleep.”

  “I’m going into alpha. That’s the only weapon I have against you guys.”

  “The letters, please,” said Judah. “We can get our own injunction. You have stolen property, Mr. Mayor.”

  “Ah, Judah,” Isaac said. “You were with the gods. Worked under Emeric Gray. And now you’re Billy the Kid’s mailman and messenger boy … you’re trespassing, gentlemen. You’ll have to leave.”

  “That’s preposterous,” said Papa Cassidy. “We’re all taxpayers. This house belongs to us.”

  “You’re wrong. It’s open to the public by invitation only. I could give you a guided tour, Papa. But you might not get through it.”

  The barons put on their winter hats. “We’ll see you in court, Sidel,” said Jason Figgs.

  “I don’t think so. Oskar would have to take the stand, talk about Bucharest and all the different mothers and fathers and uncles he’s had. Good night, gentlemen.”

  The king walked upstairs to his bedroom. He had a combination lock on his door that couldn’t be opened with any key in the world. It was designed to thwart assassins who crept into the house. The door itself could withstand explosions and earthquakes. But none of the armor soothed the king. His bedroom had all the coziness of a tank.

  He caught a glimpse of himself on the ten o’clock news. His hair had gone white in a week. He was hurtling through time at a faster clip than other men. His coronation was destroying the king.

  He got into his pajamas and started reading The Great Gatsby. He couldn’t quite recover from the shame of being a college dropout. He knew Gatsby by heart, had studied it like a Talmudist. But he still felt deprived, longed for some college instructor to reveal the book to him, illuminate Scott Fitzgerald’s lines. Gatsby seemed closer to Isaac than his own skin, the guy who rose out of nothingness, a bootlegger with a couple of months at Oxford behind him.

  Wig knocked on the king’s door at two o’clock in the morning. “You got a guest.”

  Isaac put on his robe and came downstairs. Judah Bellow sat in the living room all alone. Isaac gave him a glass of schnapps. Judah’s fingers were frozen. Isaac crouched in front of the fireplace, built a pyramid of paper and logs, so that Judah could warm his hands in the fire.

  “I didn’t care about the others,” Isaac said. “They’re Billy’s. But you shouldn’t have done his bidding, you shouldn’t have sentenced Rita to death.”

  “There was no other way. Billy was beside himself.”

  “You could have delivered your message and then told her to run.”

  “Fat chance,” Judah said.

  “Your own daughter killed herself. Quentin finds you a pen pal, Natalia, and Rita is the letterbox. But Natalia dies of pneumonia, and things got confused in your head. You blamed Rita, right?”

  “Wrong. I pleaded with Billy. I stated my case. I was awful fond of her, Isaac. Nothing sexual. She never stripped for me inside her booth. But the Gov was adamant. Said he couldn’t be safe with Rita around. Her brother was blackmailing him.”

  “And you believed Billy the Kid?… I met Black Michael in Carcassonne. He told me about the troika.”

  Judah quit rubbing his hands in front of the fire and licked his schnapps like a cat. “What troika?”

  “You, Michael, and Quentin Kahn.”

  “Michael’s a murderer with a very quick imagination. There was no troika.”

  “But why would he imagine himself into a partnership with you? To tease me, Judah? Throw me off the track?”

  “To beguile you. He fancies himself a sorcerer. Isaac, he’s my coach too. Did he ever hypnotize you across a pingpong table? Did he ever make your whole body rigid, turn you to stone for half an hour?”

  “No. He was stingy with his powers. But there was a troika. Quentin was a thug with a college education. And Michael was an outcast. Without you they could never get near Billy the Kid. You arranged all the marriages. You got Quentin into the Christy Mathewson Club, introduced him to Schyler Knott. You’re Knickerbocker number one.”

  “Nonsense,” said Judah Bellow. “I don’t even understand baseball. I never did.”

  “Was it money problems, Judah? Ali Baba was the perfect cash cow. No receipts. No records. Nothing. And you welcomed Quent into your own little club of barons. You took his filthy lucre. And you conspired with Black Michael, you profited from Ceausescu’s jewels … I didn’t close the Ali Baba. I just delivered the final kiss. I’m a public servant. I don’t have the mentality of a pharaoh. I was fumbling in the dark. You figured I’d go to Jack Caution. You anticipated it. Eddie Royal ransacked the Baba, picked it clean. But he forgot about Oskar Leviathan’s letters. He didn’t even know that Oskar could write.”

  “Isaac, sooner or later you’ll have to give the letters back.”

  “Nah, Judah. I treasure them. I read Oskar’s letters all the time.”

  “They’re dangerous for you.”

  “What isn’t? I put my nose into everything. That’s my nature … ah, you should receive a memorandum from the mayor’s office. I typed it myself. I’m tossing you and Jason and Papa off the Landmarks Commission.”

  “We’re your main builders, Isaac. You won’t have much of a commission.”

  Judah finished his schnapps and went out into the night. It was a quarter to three. Isaac cursed himself. The trivia of his job, the sheer weight of it, was sinking him into forgetfulness. The Sidel administration was incomplete. The king had neglected his most important commissioner.

  He couldn’t find his bodyguard. He dressed, got past the gatekeeper, and drove down to the Christys. Nothing had changed in the last month. The club was still boarded up. Isaac took out his pocket flashlight and let himself in through the cellar door.

  Schyler was sitting in the same royal chair. His beard was a little longer. He had cartons of Chinese food at his feet. Ah, he might have been a lot healthier on a diet of Milky Ways.

  Isaac shone the light in Schyler’s face. Schyler blinked.

  “Jesus,” Isaac said, “why the hell are you here? You’re not a fugitive. No one’s even looking for the Knickerbocker Boys. No one gives a damn.”

  “But I do. I’m not reopening the Christys. There’s nothing out there for me.”

  “So you sit here like Rip Van Winkle. You give up the fucking fight. You’re a twelfth-generation New Yorker.”

  “Thirteenth,” Schyler said.

  “You’re related to Peter Stuyvesant, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Peter Minuit.”

  “The biggest landgrabber in history. He robbed the Indians blind.”

  “He was just a speculator. Like your friends, Jason Figgs and Judah Bellow.”

  “They’re not my friends, and I threw them off Landmarks, together with Papa Cassidy … Schyler, you’ve been a ghost long enough. I need you with the living. I won’t have a Landmarks Commission without you. The pharaohs will steal my pants.”

  “Isaac, I’ll landmark every window, every wall. The pharaohs will have to build in hell.”

  “That’s fine with me.”

  Isaac returned to the mansion. It was almost five in the morning. He couldn’t sleep. He had a frozen Milky Way out of the fridge. His bodyguard arrived a few minutes after him. They both munched on Milky Ways.

  “Brother Isaac, are you gonna ask me where I been?”

  “I don’t have the courage.”

  “Yes you do.”

  “Then I’d say you’ve been settling accounts with at least one of the Knickerbocker Boys. Quentin Kahn.”

  “He was getting it off with some bitch at his suite in the Pierre. I snuck past security. I picked Quent’s lock, stood outside the boudoir. I let him have his love grunts. He came out of the bedroom whistling to himself. I grabbed ol’ Quent and pushed him into the toilet. ‘Rita,’ I said. One word. He pissed on his own leg. I offed him. Nearly pulled his neck out of its socket. He perished with his eyes open. You gonna call the police, or should I do it?”

  “Ah, let’s wait,” Isa
ac said, sleepy all of a sudden. He climbed upstairs to his bedroom, but he couldn’t recall the combination. It was Albert Wiggens who had to monkey with the king’s lock.

  28.

  Smut Lord Tycoon Found Dead at the Pierre.

  Quentin’s picture was on the front page of the Times. “Police suspect foul play.” He was thirty-nine years old. He’d attended Swarthmore, Williams, and Wesleyan. He was worth close to a hundred million dollars. His real name wasn’t Quentin Kahn. He was born Louis Lister near the Bronx Zoo. His dad peddled shoelaces and died in a madhouse. His mom had deserted him when he was five. He’d been an entrepreneur at eleven, controlling a small monopoly of newspaper routes. He’d never finished high school. But he changed his name, invented new parents for himself and a high school diploma, and got into Swarthmore, paying his own tuition. But the college soon discovered lapses in the education of their Louis Lister/Quentin Kahn. And Quent forged his way into Williams, then Wesleyan, then returned to Manhattan island, where he opened a massage parlor at nineteen.

  The Bronx’s own Jay Gatsby. Isaac preferred Louis Lister to Quentin Kahn. He was going to make a pilgrimage to Bronx Park, seek out the apartment house where Louis was born. Could it have been an Emeric Gray? Probably not. Emeric had never wandered that deep into the Bronx.

  No one from the NYPD arrived to arrest Wig. The D.A. didn’t even ask to question Isaac. Papa Cassidy called, seemed very humble. “I won’t complain about getting bumped off Landmarks, Mr. Mayor. I serve at your pleasure. And I’m proud of that.”

  It was all blather. Papa was backing off. And Isaac began to wonder if the whole damn world was blind. Wasn’t anybody gonna arrest Wig? Isaac studied his own detail. Larry Quinn, who was constantly fighting with Wig, now purred in his presence. The maids brought Wig’s breakfast up to him on a silver tray. The tour guides saluted him. The pols who visited Isaac couldn’t take their eyes off Albert Wiggens.