Citizen Sidel (The Isaac Sidel Novels)

by Jerome Charyn

  And he disappeared, popped up again in his motorcade, with Secret Service men on the trunk of his car, blocked traffic for three hours, brought mayhem to Manhattan as he slipped into the garage of the Waldorf Towers, and rode up to the Presidential Suite with Pamela Box wearing red, white, and blue.

  He called Gracie Mansion, wanted Isaac to ride with him into the Maldavanka, help him christen Century Town as a bipartisan project, a Republican dream in a Democratic village. But Isaac didn’t take the call. His deputies panicked. Calder Cottonwood had managed to co-opt Isaac Sidel, turn him into a struggling little boy.

  Tim Seligman left a message. Sidel, don’t you dare ride down with that prick.

  Isaac needed counsel. But he had no one. His single network was a rat and two kids. He ran out of his mansion, summoned his chauffeur, and rode across the Verrazano Bridge to a posh insane asylum on Arthur Kill Road. He was visiting Becky Karp, the former mayor, who was in the middle of a monster depression. She’d torn out all her hair and had attempted suicide twice.

  It was Isaac who’d committed her. She had no living relatives, and she’d become Isaac’s ward. They’d been lovers once, when Isaac was the First Deputy Police Commissioner and Rebecca Karp ruled City Hall, an ex—beauty queen, Miss Far Rockaway of 1947. It was before Margaret Tolstoy had come back into his life. Becky fought with everyone, but she had an infallible instinct for things outside herself.

  She wore a wig. Isaac could barely recognize her. Miss Far Rockaway had lost fifty pounds. She was skin and bones. But her depression seemed to lift.

  “That cocksucker,” she said. “Isaac, he wants to build his own model city in our town.”

  “I could sabotage his plans. He can’t get a permit without me.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You’ll have to go along with him. He’s won the round.”

  “But it’ll look like I’m pimping for the Republican Party.”

  “No. We’ll run circles around Calder Cottonwood. Help me get dressed.”

  “Why?”

  “Schmuck, we’re riding together in Calder’s motorcade.”

  “But I can’t release you, Becky. I don’t have the power. We’ll need an examining psychiatrist, and …”

  “Isaac, it’s simple. Pronounce me cured. Somebody’s gotta believe you.”

  Isaac waltzed her past the reception desk, but a doctor stood in his way.

  “Mr. President, sir, Rebecca isn’t stable.”

  Isaac glared at the doctor’s name tag. “Johnson, it’s a matter of life and death. I have to consult with Her Honor. And I can’t do it here. I’ll bring her back. I promise.”

  The doctor looked into Isaac’s eyes, saw the urgency and the madness. He wanted to straitjacket the two mayors, but he had to let them go.

  “Thanks, Johnson, you won’t regret it. I’ll have a peek at your budget, and …”

  “Please, sir, get the hell out of here.”

  They rode back across the Verrazano Bridge, Becky mesmerized by the burnt orange pillars.

  “Isaac, wasn’t that old bridge blue?”

  “Never,” Isaac declared. “Why did Calder keep mentioning Ellis Island? The whole country hates New York.”

  “But the country doesn’t hate you. That cocksucker is trying to leapfrog onto your back.”

  They stopped at the Waldorf. Isaac paged the President from the Waldorf Towers desk. “Sidel here. I’d like to come up.” Two Secret Service men in dark glasses accompanied him and Becky to the Presidential Suite. Pam met them at the door, whispered in Isaac’s ear. “Who’s the skeleton? Mrs. Death?”

  Isaac ignored her and marched with Becky into the master bedroom, where the Prez was sprawled out on a four-poster that could barely accommodate his legs. He didn’t scoff at Rebecca Karp.

  “Hello, Madam Mayor,” he said. “Good to see you again.” He rose out of bed to offer her a seat in a black rocking chair. “That’s the Kennedy rocker. It’s priceless. Only three other chairs like it in the world. I do my best thinking in that chair.”

  Then he sat down again and summoned Isaac to the four-poster. “You’re the Commish. Tell me, did the Kennedys have Marilyn killed?”

  “Anything’s possible, Mr. President.”

  Calder winked at Rebecca Karp. “He talks like a politician. Won’t commit himself. But I think it’s a shame. Both brothers boffing her, Jack and his little attorney general. Never liked Bobby. She was a generous girl, a schizophrenic princess. They broke her heart.”

  “Mr. President,” Pam said, “do you have to keep talking about poor Marilyn Monroe?”

  Calder grabbed a book from his night table and tossed it at Pam. She might have lost an eye if one of the Secret Service men hadn’t deflected the book.

  “Let’s get down to details,” she said. “Isaac, where will you ride? At the back of the motorcade?”

  Isaac stared at Becky Karp. “With you,” he said.

  “That’s impossible. We can’t have Calder and a Democrat in the same car. People …”

  The President glared at her. “Shut up. I like it. A couple of pioneers. Cottonwood and Sidel.”

  “And Becky Karp,” Isaac said. “Becky rides with us.”

  “I’ll buy that too … Mr. Mayor, I’m falling in love with your town. We’ll take that goddamn slum and turn it into some hell of a garden.”

  Becky rocked in JFK’s chair. “Calder,” she told him, “cut the crap. That garden of yours is a fable. No government could ever afford it. You came into our yard and caught us with our pants down. Bravo. We have to go through the fiction that Isaac is going to help you build Shangri-la. We sit together, we smile … and then we go back to knocking each other’s brains out.”

  “I love this girl,” the President said. “Isaac, you’re a lucky bastard. I could steal her from you and make her my Secretary of War.”

  “Mr. President,” Pam said, “we don’t have a Secretary of War. You mean Secretary of Defense.”

  “No,” Calder said, smiling at Becky Karp. “I mean War.”

  They traveled down Fifth Avenue in the President’s enormous limo, with Secret Service men on the roofs. Calder sat between Becky and Isaac, crossed his hands over his head like some heavyweight champion.

  They arrived in the badlands, bumped across broken streets, crowds gathering behind them. The limo stopped in a burnt-out field, where Barton Grossvogel stood with his men, wearing parade uniforms. He saluted the Prez with a crisp white glove. And Calder’s scenario began to make sense. Ah, Isaac mused like some downtown Hamlet, an amnesiac who was suddenly waking up. The fuckers couldn’t afford to have Dougy around. Dougy would have spoiled their celebration, with his orange pants. A rogue cop who was protecting a district Calder wanted to claim as his own.

  Isaac helped Becky out of the car. She could feel the mayhem under his skin. She shoved him along, steered him to the President’s blind side. “Steady. You’ll ruin us if you explode.”

  “But he’ll make a fucking hero out of Bart.”

  “We’ll unhero him … when the time is ripe. Control yourself.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Isaac, if you’re a sissy, I’m going back to Staten Island.”

  “Stay,” Isaac said, “stay,” and he joined Calder, Pam, and Bart, with a killer’s smile. He couldn’t find Bernardo Dublin. And for a moment he wished that Captain Knight would appear and get rid of Calder. But the Prez was inside a knot of Secret Service men. Isaac himself was part of that knot. He fingered the medals that covered Captain Bart’s coat.

  “Your Honor, I earned every one.”

  “I’ll bet you did …”

  Calder held out his arms, beckoned Isaac and Captain Bart.

  “Good people,” he said, his words riding the hot wind. “I’m not a shirker. I didn’t summon you to some barren plain so you could hear an idle song. I intend to build. But we couldn’t have had the idea without Bart Grossvogel, the captain who presides over this territory. You’re standing on what was once a
robbers’ den. And Bart cleaned all the robbers out. He’s my rabbi in Manhattan … along with Isaac Sidel.”

  Isaac began to sink inside his suit. Citizens from the Maldavanka stared at him as if he’d betrayed the Democratic donkey. “Isaac,” an old woman mumbled to him. “Isaac, have you lost your mind?”

  The Prez babbled about all the secular cathedrals he would put up on the downtown plains. And soon the Maldavanka had become a bit of Kansas and Nebraska. Reporters hounded Isaac, begged him for an interview.

  “Children,” he said, “it’s Calder’s day. Why should I steal from him?”

  He was watching the streets when Bernardo Dublin appeared in dark glasses and roller blades. “Boss, if Captain Knights around, he must be an invisible man.”

  Photographers snapped Isaac with the Prez. Becky clutched Isaac’s hand. “Sonny, finish what you started. We ride uptown with him to the Waldorf.”

  Isaac grew more and more sullen as they drove out of the badlands. Pam dangled the President’s cellular phone at him. “Tim Seligman. It must be urgent if he’s calling you on the President’s line.”

  Becky grabbed the phone. “Seligman, you can’t disturb the Citizen. He’s thinking.” And she tossed the phone into Pamela’s lap.

  The Prez wouldn’t go back into the secrecy of the Waldorf Towers. He strode up the Park Avenue stairs and entered the main lobby with Isaac Sidel, mingling with guests as the Secret Service formed a tightening circle around him. But he broke through the circle, waltzed with a bride who was on her honeymoon at the hotel. He’d come out of his month-long hibernation, and was eager to talk and dance. Isaac stared at the Secret Service men with their shades and button mikes, and he started to smile. One of them was much beefier than the rest, wore a suit that didn’t seem to fit … and carried a Glock in his pants, like Sinbad himself. It was Captain Knight. Isaac didn’t wait for the glint of that gun. He leapt into the air, tackled the President and the Waldorf bride, and caught a bullet in the slightly padded shoulder of his suit. The bride screamed. Guests dropped to the floor, hid behind furniture, as Secret Service men bumped into each other trying to shield the President. Captain Knight had already vanished in the hurlyburly.

  Isaac pulled out his Glock. There was blood on his shoulder. He wasn’t going to shoot Captain Knight. He wanted to save him from the Secret Service. He ran through a door into the bowels of the Waldorf, where the kitchen was located. He could have been dreaming. He’d stumbled upon some cooking school. He saw ten or fifteen chefs in white toques, with whipped-cream guns in their hands, working on a pile of pastry. The kitchen didn’t seem to have an end. It was bigger than the Waldorf.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, “did a man in dark glasses come your way?”

  The chefs looked at him with a certain pity in their eyes.

  “Mr. Mayor, you’re bleeding.”

  He marched back upstairs to the lobby. The President sat in a gilded chair. The Waldorf’s chief physician rushed over to Isaac, cut away his shoulder pad with a pair of surgical scissors.

  “Ah,” Isaac said, “it’s just a scratch,” and saw black spots in front of his eyes.

  16

  The bullet had nicked his arm without entering Isaac. He wouldn’t go to the hospital. He was given the Cole Porter Suite, where the same doctor dressed Isaac’s wound. The Waldorf was receiving hundreds of calls. Isaac’s own fate was like a maddening balloon. In a couple of hours he’d gone from being a turncoat to a champion who’d risked his own life to rescue Calder Cottonwood. The pollsters’ new dream ticket was Cottonwood-Sidel, as if the nation wanted a president and vice-president outside the usual noise of political parties.

  Sidel had destabilized the whole fucking process. He was like a force majeure, beyond energy fields. No one could tame him, except Rebecca Karp, who’d been hustled back to her asylum on Arthur Kill Road, while Isaac snored in Cole Porter’s bed. What was it like to live for twenty-five years in a hotel that could have been an Art Deco battleship? Isaac fiddled with Porter’s biography in his sleep, remembered a man who fell off a horse, crushed both his legs, became a cripple who couldn’t walk without a pair of canes, but still traveled around the world from his suite at the Waldorf. Isaac had grown up on Cole Porter’s songs, would have given his Glock to the devil if he could have written “Begin the Beguine.”

  He was like another president. The Waldorf had sewn his initials on his towels and bathrobe. He called the Arthur Kill asylum. “Becky, I didn’t mean to abandon you …”

  “Don’t apologize. I had enough excitement to keep me going for a year. Careful, Isaac. You’re swimming in a sea of sharks.”

  “But what if I don’t swim?”

  “They’ll still eat you alive.”

  “I could get out of the race. Can’t I retire in Cole Porter’s bed?”

  “Manhattan doesn’t like losers. The Waldorf would kick you out on your ass.”

  But no concierge in white gloves appeared to present Isaac with a bill. He was the wounded warrior. He didn’t have to campaign. He was on the covers of Fortune and Vanity Fair. With a scratchy face. Sinbad. He had fan clubs in forty-two states, and he still hadn’t gotten out of bed. If he craved sausages, sausages would arrive, compliments of the chef. The Waldorf kitchen was open to Sinbad night and day.

  He wished November would come without him, that he could shut his eyes and escape the elections. He told the Towers desk that he would only take calls from Marianna, Angel, and Rebecca Karp. His phone rang, and when he didn’t recognize the voice right away, he growled, “Who is it?”

  “Calder. Could you meet me at the Bull and Bear in twenty minutes? I’d be most grateful.”

  The Bull & Bear was a businessman’s restaurant inside the Waldorf. Isaac didn’t have to dress. He got into the elevator in his slippers and robe, like any invalid. It was past the lunch hour, and the restaurant had been closed off for the President, who stood at the eight-cornered mahogany bar in a linen suit, while Isaac stared at the Bull & Bear’s electronic stock ribbon, even though he was an infant in matters concerning the market.

  “I should have thanked you,” Calder said. “Will you have a drink?”

  Isaac didn’t see one Secret Service man.

  He had some lemonade. The Prez was clutching a glass of white wine. He blinked once, and the bartender disappeared. They were all alone in the Bull & Bear.

  “It’s no five-star restaurant,” Calder said. “But I like the Caesar salad. Would you prefer to sit down?”

  “No,” Isaac said. “It’s pleasant here.” He could imagine Cole Porter sipping champagne at one of these eight corners.

  “I’m spoiled. I feel like I own the place … that was Captain Knight, wasn’t it? The mysterious stranger. Did he wing you on purpose? Was it a big act?”

  “I doubt it, Mr. President. You had his son killed.”

  “I’m not going to spar with you, Sidel. The Service let me down. They should have spotted a lunatic in dark glasses, pretending to be one of their own … how’d he get away?”

  “Through the kitchen. Ever been down there, Calder? It’s like a military base.”

  “How are you sleeping, kid?”

  “Like a prince. I have Cole Porter’s bed.”

  “I can’t sleep. I have nightmares. Margaret disappeared. Not even Bull Latham can find her. Has she visited your suite? Because I’d give you the presidency if I can have Margaret back.”

  “Calder, did you get me out of bed to rub my nose in bullshit? Your men have been watching my door. Half the waiters who feed me work for you. I’ll bet they’re your poker partners on Air Force One.”

  “I can’t live without Margaret.”

  Isaac left his lemonade on the Bull & Bear’s mahogany. He got into his clothes. His hands weren’t steady. He had the hotel barber shave him. He watched himself in the mirror. He was pale as a disinherited peach …

  He didn’t have much of a homecoming. His deputies weren’t around. Marianna must have been in the park
with her muralist. He couldn’t find Boyle or Joe Montaigne. He climbed up to his bedroom and looked into a pair of silver-pink eyes.

  “Raskolnikov,” he said, “Raskolnikov.”

  But the rat wouldn’t jump, wouldn’t cling to Isaac’s neck. He stayed on the pillow. And Isaac didn’t have a single ally left.

  17

  The Big Guy couldn’t sleep away from the Waldorf. He wanted to borrow Cole Porters bed. Finally he drifted into a dream that was neither night nor day. Isaac had entered some curious zone where he was like a visitor at the movies, watching battles inside his head. The eyeless sailor appeared. Sinbad. He was harpooning someone, digging at him ferociously. Isaac heard a scream, recognized the sailor’s victim. It was Isaac himself.

  He got up from his couch, drank a glass of water, fed Raskolnikov. He understood the rightness of Sinbad’s red harpoon. They meant to kill him. Calder and his gang. And the killer would be someone close to Sidel. He was sure of it.

  He could join Becky in her asylum, put a couple of rivers between him and the assassins, whoever they were. And then the assassins announced themselves. Bull Latham had arrived with Captain Grossvogel, Clarice, and Bernardo Dublin.

  “No more monkey business,” Clarice said, after the Bull brought Marianna down from her bedroom. “I have a judge’s writ. I came to collect my little girl.”

  Marianna struggled in Clarice’s arms, while Alyosha stood on the stairs.

  “Wouldn’t interfere,” the Bull said to Isaac. “Am I wrong, Bart? You’d have to arrest our candidate for meddling with the law.”

  “But it was Clarice who lent Marianna to me.”

  “Lent,” Bart sang, “that’s the crucial word. And now the lender wants her back.”

  Marianna started to cry. “Uncle Isaac, don’t let them take me. I’ll only return to you and Alyosha.”

  “That reminds me,” Bart said. “We have another writ. Seems that your little man has run away from a bad boys’ hotel in Peekskill. We’ll have to collect him too.”