32.
Little Angel Street.
The mansion held no meaning for Isaac without Margaret Tolstoy. He had his own rocking chair installed on the porch. He would either rock alone, or with Becky Karp, then walk down to the fireboat station at the edge of Carl Schurz Park and ride one of the launches with his fire patrol. He felt calm on the water, as if he could shed that rough political skin he had to wear as mayor of New York. He would cross the channel into the whirlpools of Hell Gate, cruise up the Harlem River, while people waved to him from the broken docks, his thick sideburns suspiciously clear under the metal brim of his fireman’s hat.
But Isaac couldn’t live out on that launch. A seafaring mayor was still locked to the land. It was lucky for him that he had Martin Malik. Malik ran the City while Isaac rode on the river or rocked in his chair. But the king had a sudden longing for pingpong. He went to Schiller’s on foot, passed the kibbitzers’ gallery, and paused at Manfred Coen’s table. He missed Coen more than he cared to remember. Isaac was always finding and losing angels. He sat near the wall and started to meditate. But an angel crept out of the wall. And the king shivered like he’d never shivered before.
“Coen?” he said. “Blue Eyes?”
The angel wouldn’t answer him. And then Isaac understood its source. One more phantom visiting Schiller’s pockmarked walls. The lights were constantly playing tricks. But this phantom wouldn’t go away. It had a black leather coat. Herman Melville had come to haunt him at Manfred’s pingpong table.
“Coach, I can’t stay.”
“Ah, Hector,” Isaac said. “LeComte’s preparing a little crucifixion. He’ll kill you if he catches you around me.”
“I promised you Black Michael’s address, didn’t I?”
“That’s the problem. He doesn’t have an address.”
“Yeah, the sucker has his own chateau. It’s near a town with a lot of towers.”
“Carcassonne,” Isaac said.
“That’s it. Carky. Michael has his own lake and a black forest. It’s called the chateau of the forest. You can’t miss it. Isaac, I have my spies. Just like you and LeComte. We’re a band of brothers and sisters, all the FBI’s undercover rats.”
“Did you and the rats ever work with Michael?”
“Michael works alone.”
“That’s the record I keep hearing. Michael works alone.”
“He was trained by a monk. They were in a dungeon somewhere. The monk taught him how to catch colors in the dark and breathe without breathing. Michael can make his own heart stop.”
“A miracle man,” Isaac said.
“He cured my rheumatism. You remember. I had a rheumatic thumb. Michael rubbed his hands together until they were hot as hell. He put them around my bad thumb, transferred all the heat from him to me, and I was cured. Michael cooked my thumb.”
“How?” Isaac asked. “When? I thought you never worked with Michael.”
“Ah, I met him once. Coach, you’d better bring some heavy shit. Because you can’t beat Michael. And even if you could, the guy has clearance all the way up to God. He can shoot the governor, and it wouldn’t be considered a crime.”
“Then I’ll have to take my chances,” Isaac said.
“I almost forgot. Michael raises animals. He has a deer farm.”
“Don’t you mean a deer park?”
“No. Definitely a farm.”
And Hector Ramirez ran out of Schiller’s in his black leather coat.
The king couldn’t jump on a plane like a private citizen and satisfy his wanderlust. He belonged to the City of New York. His signature, his touch, his voice were needed in case of an emergency. He could ride on a fireboat, vegetate in a rocking chair, as long as he could be reached. It was forbidden for a mayor to disappear.
He sat with Rebecca Karp on his own porch, which felt like a dead planet to him. “Becky, I have to go to Carcassonne and kill a man.”
“Be my guest.”
“But I can’t pretend I’m on a trade mission.”
“Isaac,” she said. “You’re dying. I can see it on your face. We’ll get you a plane ticket. No fuss. Kill whoever you have to kill, but call in every six hours, understand? Malik will cover for you. And if they arrest you on your flight home, we’ll have a team of lawyers at the arrival lounge … it’s that Tolstoy woman, isn’t it? Anastasia.”
“No. It’s Little Angel Street.”
Isaac climbed upstairs to his fortress and started to pack. He was at JFK in four hours. With Rebecca Karp. She carried his ticket, his passport, and a small bundle of traveler’s checks. The king was flying business class. He gave no interviews at the airport. But it was obvious to everyone that Isaac was leaving the country. He kissed Rebecca, realized that this rough ex-beauty queen was his only ally.
“Come back to us,” she said.
Isaac arrived in Carcassonne the next afternoon. He had a marvelous coffee at a cafe near the ramparts. He could hear a siren calling him under the call of the wind. Isaac. Isaac. Was it Sophie Sidel, his poor mother, the junk queen who’d been trampled to death? Was she warning her older son away from violence? “Mama,” he said, “sometimes you have to kill.” He was like a madman talking to the wind.
Michael’s house on the rue St. Jean was locked. Isaac peeked through a tiny crack in the shutters. There wasn’t a soul inside. The king got into his rented car, drove down the rue du Grand Puits, crossed the Aude River on the Pont de l’Avenir, and rode into the Montagne Noire, the black mountain where Michael had his retreat. It was cluttered with gold mines and game preserves and lugubrious places, like the Waterfall of the Bad Death. It was Carol’s country, all right. Le Château du Forêt was in the Forest of the Dead Crab. Isaac could have torched the place with a couple of matches. But it wasn’t a real chateau. It was more like a hunting lodge in disrepair. There were huge gaps in the stone porch. The chimneys had started to crumble. The roof looked like the beginning of a landslide. There was a fence near the lodge that enclosed a long barren field. But the field wasn’t so barren. Tiny spotted deer emerged from all the emptiness. They moved in packs of five or ten with a startling swiftness. First they stood frozen, staring at Isaac, and then they leapt like human lozenges. This was the deer farm that Hector Ramirez had been talking about. Isaac had never noticed such perfect creatures in all his life. Midget brown deer with red spots. The males had bumpy little horns. They slid across the field with their own silent music.
The king was hypnotized. He couldn’t bear to take his eyes off them. He would have murdered his own father for the privilege of remaining where he was. It was the only society he would ever need. But someone called him from the house.
“Mr. Sidel.”
It was Oskar Leviathan, wearing the dark clothes of a hunter. His eyes were pure blue in Michael’s forest. Isaac entered the house. It had a fireplace, a few pieces of furniture, a fridge, and a pingpong table. The redheaded lioness, Nina Anghel, sat on a very bare sofa, without lipstick or nail polish. She seemed indifferent to Isaac. Black Michael was with the lioness. He wasn’t wearing any shoes. Good, the king thought. He’ll trip and break his ass.
“Been expecting you, little father. Did you bring a gun?”
“I wouldn’t point a gun at my own master,” Isaac said.
“That’s wise. Because I could sit here and catch all your bullets in my hand.”
“Just like the late Archibald Harris,” Isaac said. “When he was in the nigger leagues. He would catch baseball bullets with either hand … did Billy the Kid pay you to hide Oskar Leviathan, huh?”
“He’s a cautious man, like any presidential candidate. He couldn’t afford to have Oskar in his dossier, not after you started trampling around. You broke his niece’s heart.”
“I’d like Rose to have the boy, no matter what happens to you or me.”
“Nothing will happen to you, little father. You’re blessed. But you really ought to think like a politician. You could blackmail Billy if Rose gets Oskar back
.”
“That’s not my style.”
“Your style might change. And Billy can’t risk that.”
“Then bury me in potter’s field. I’m the original Geronimo Jones.”
“Harm my best pupil? Wouldn’t dream of it.”
“You’ll have to dream of something else, because I’m taking the boy to Rose.”
“Ask Oskar if he’ll go with you. He likes it here.”
“I live with Nina now,” said Oskar Leviathan. “And Black Michael.”
“What about Rose and Uncle Billy?” Isaac asked.
“Rose was America,” the boy said.
“But you loved Willie Mays.”
“True,” the boy said. “But I will recover.”
The king gnashed his fists together. “Michael, I’m sorry, but I have to kill you.”
Black Michael started to laugh. “But I have protectors. Nina and Oskar and my daims, my spotted dear. They’re much better than watchdogs. They sniffed you from miles away. When they’re agitated, little father, their feet start to whistle on the ground.”
“You should have kept away from Wig. He’s my man. And you tricked him into falling off a roof.”
“He’s alive, isn’t he, little father? He landed in a lot of clotheslines. And it’s his own special fate to fall off roofs.”
“You put him in a wheelchair.”
“Perfect. He’ll have to avoid all roofs … but why should we argue? We’ll settle this at my pingpong table. If you score one point against me, I’ll close my eyes and induce my own death.”
“Like a monk, huh?”
“Ah, you’ve been chatting with your baseball orphan, Hector Ramirez. He told you about the monk I met while I was still a policeman.”
“The monk was your cellmate.”
“And the best teacher I ever had. We exercised together in a room that was the size of a dumbwaiter. I had no fear of dying after I was with this monk. I longed for it. I kissed the belly of the beast. I’m just like you, little father.”
“What happened to the monk?”
“Had to turn him in. It’s a pity, but I’d been sent to prison to spy on him … it’s time for pingpong. All you have to do is make one point.”
“Do I get Oskar Leviathan?”
“Of course. And the lioness can fend for herself. But you won’t break up my family, little father. Not you or LeComte or Ceausescu’s palace princes. I’m waiting for you. Pick up your bat.”
Isaac faced Black Michael across the net. “I’m not like you. I’m not a fucking death machine.”
“Score on me, little father. One point, and you’re rid of me forever.”
Isaac picked up the Butterfly that was on the table, crouched, and delivered his very best cut serve. Michael slammed the ball back into Isaac’s face.
Oskar and Nina Anghel watched this game that wasn’t a game. Isaac couldn’t even see the spin on Michael’s serves. He lunged, he groped like a ridiculous bear. But he’d outlast this lousy king of the dead. Michael’s eyes began to flutter. It was almost as if his spirit had left the table.
“Where are you, Michael?”
“With my spotted deer … if you could see the colors I see, hear the sounds, you would fall on your knees and die with delight. You’re a blind man, Isaac, and you’ll always be.”
“Good. But I’m going to fuck you out of a point.”
His mouth was dry. And he began seeing double. It felt like he’d been hitting the ball for hours. One of his eyes closed. He almost screamed, because Black Michael looked more and more like Manfred Coen. The king should never have agreed to this match. He could no longer lift his arm.
“Where’s Margaret Tolstoy?” he asked before the Butterfly fell out of his hand and he crashed into the net, the table collapsing under him like a coffin.
33.
The same Hungarians were chasing her, exiled police chiefs who wanted Michael’s money. But she couldn’t glock them in the street. This was Montparnasse and the boulevard Edgar Quinet, not the badlands of New York. The gendarmes weren’t on such intimate terms with anarchy, and the crime squad wouldn’t appreciate a gun-toting mama from Odessa with a Parisian past. She had to close all of Michael’s companies, collect as much as she could from his bank accounts, and not cause any suspicion. The bank managers knew her as Michael’s married sister, Madame Tolstoya. The best defense, according to Black Michael, was to embroider the truth with only the least little lie. Michael and Margaret were as close to brother and sister as any pair of orphans could ever be. Michael trusted her with all his accounts.
She was carrying a fortune in francs and doing fine, dodging all those Hungarians, when she saw a picture of Isaac in the International Herald Tribune. Her darling had two headlines devoted to him.
MAYOR OF NEW YORK MISSING
SIDEL BELIEVED TO BE IN FRANCE
Was that cuckoobird in Carcassonne? She called Michael in the Montagne Noire. But Michael must have been busy with his spotted deer. He wouldn’t pick up the telephone. How could she find the cuckoohead and continue collecting money? She arrived on the boulevard Arago and climbed six flights to Nicolae Mars’ chambre de bonne. Nicolae was a Roumanian novelist. There were a hundred of them in Paris at the moment, and it seemed to her that Michael was supporting every one. Most of them lived in maids’ rooms, like Nicolae Mars. A few of them had French publishers. Nicolae was the doyen of these emigre novelists. He was fifty-five years old. He wore thick glasses and had a slight paunch. He’d once been a member of the Securitate. But he’d fallen out of favor with Ceausescu and the secret police. He looked like a beardless Santa Claus.
French had always been Roumania’s second language. Bucharest was the Balkan paradise, un petit Paris, until Ceausescu began ripping up the streets and building his nightmare boulevards. The State publishing houses had already silenced Nicolae Mars and declared him a dead man. Still, he might have stayed. But he was a hypochondriac, and it was this that saved him. He worried about what might happen if he ever fell ill. The hospitals in Bucharest had run out of medicine. The operating rooms were open at random hours. There were incurable shortages of electricity. Nicolae was convinced he would die on an operating table in the middle of a blackout. He ran to Paris without a kopeck. It was Black Michael who set him up in the attic. Michael had romantic notions about literature. He loved the smell of books. Margaret was a little less attached to the written word. Novels held no future for her. Besides, she found Nicolae unreadable in Roumanian and French. He couldn’t keep away from love stories. But the passion he described in his books seemed dull and predictable to Margaret. Nicolae’s men were always leaping on dark-eyed girls and announcing their devotion in pathetic little poems.
She’d brought a stack of “Molières” to Nicolae, five-hundred-franc notes. It was the last bundle she would ever bring. Nicolae couldn’t believe it.
“Michael’s going out of business. He’s been caught between several agencies. He’ll retire in the Montagne Noire.”
“Margaret, without Michael how shall I live?”
“You have a French publisher.”
“Who never pays royalties,” said the novelist. “How shall I live?”
“Ah,” she said, “I’ll help you. I’ll become a patron of the arts.”
Nicolae measured her with his owlish eyes. “Would you marry me, my dear Margaret?”
“I’m a widow,” she said. “I couldn’t ever marry again.”
“But I have been warming up to you.”
“It’s the money, Nicolae. All the Molières.”
“No,” he said. “I’m not a gold digger. I have a weakness for women with red hair.”
Margaret took off her wig, revealed her sudden baldness to Nicolae Mars. “You imagined me one way, Nicolae. Now you have the other.”
But her baldness seemed to inflame Nicolae. His nostrils flared. “Darling, lie down with me.”
“Nicolae, Nicolae, who has the time?”
He pounced on her l
ike one of the characters in his books. She was startled by Nicolae’s strength. He wasn’t such a Santa Claus! But he grew paralyzed when he saw the Glock in her hand. She danced around him and put her wig back on. Her “bridal bag,” a simple velvet sack, was still open. He was staring at the fortune of francs inside. He could almost move the money with his eyes. She closed the bridal bag and left him there in the attic. He’d never even thanked Michael. What could you expect from a novelist?
She got into a taxi near the green lion of Denfert-Rochereau. The lion had always amused her. It marked the limit of her walks as a child in Nazi Paris. The German soldiers would visit the Eiffel Tower or the Sacré-Coeur, loll around Montmartre with all the little aging artists, but Margaret had her lion.
She crossed the river and rode into the Marais. If she couldn’t find her dumb darling, she’d visit with his dad. Joel Sidel, the portrait painter. She got out of the cab with her sack, wandered around on the rue Vieille-du-Temple, went through an opening in the wall, discovered a dark court with magical blue earth, like a cemetery where golems might sleep. Some curious instinct rubbed at Margaret and led her up a stairway to Joel’s door. He was supposed to have a Vietnamese companion, a mistress-wife. But she wasn’t inside the flat. The walls were pale green, like her lion. Joel was lying in bed with a goatee that had gone yellow. He looked like a starving man. Margaret would have fed him noodles or something, but the cupboards were bare. There couldn’t have been a lady in this house.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Your son’s fiancée,” she said, assuming she’d have to lie a little to this old man or he might suspect she’d come to rob him of all his valuables: the pale green walls, trinkets of dust.
“Leo’s getting married again?”
“Not Leo,” she said. “Your other son.”
His face grew resentful under the goatee. “Ah, the mayor. Him with his black heart. Can’t forgive his father for coming to Paris. Only he can have a new life.”
“Mr. Sidel, you’ll have to get dressed.”
“Call me Joel. You’re almost in the family, even if you are a stranger. Where are we going?”
Little Angel Street (The Isaac Sidel Novels) Page 20