Citizen Sidel (The Isaac Sidel Novels)

by Jerome Charyn

  “She was stamped on,” Isaac said, “stomped.”

  “Yes, savagely kicked, not once or twice, but many, many times.”

  Isaac’s dizziness had come back. He thanked the intern, but the Big Guy could barely walk. He had a habit of manufacturing his own angels of death.

  “Ah,” he said, “my beloved Bernardo.”

  It was the signature of the Bronx brigade. That’s how Bernardo Dublin destroyed half his own gang. He’d stomped them to death. And then Alyosha would paint their pictures on a wall.

  How did Bernardo get to Elizabeth Street so fast, pull him away from Bart? It was all rehearsed. Bernardo had a much more subtle rabbi than Isaac Sidel. He belonged to Bull Latham.

  Isaac rushed upstairs to Margaret, held her hand. And Sinbad the Sailor started to cry.

  He was back in public school, with Margaret Tolstoy, who called herself Anastasia and bewitched the entire class. What could mansions mean to him, the brouhaha of worldly power, next to Anastasia’s smile? She appeared one day out of the blue, with holes in her socks, and the bearing of a princess. She’d studied ballet. She’d lived in Paris, starved in Odessa, and Isaac hadn’t even crossed the Williamsburg Bridge.

  When she vanished without a word, he fell into a state of shock. Isaac couldn’t recover, no matter how many cases he solved, how many people he glocked … until Anastasia reappeared, like a divine accident that had probably been arranged by the FBI.

  She opened her almond eyes. He was still clutching her hand. He’d been with her two days, had barely washed, grabbed sandwiches from a nurse. Her hand moved in Isaac’s. She tried to speak.

  “Shhh,” he said. “It’s all right. I know it was Bernardo Dublin.”

  There was almost a smile under that mummy’s mask of hers. She whispered a couple of words. Isaac couldn’t read her lips. She gripped his hand a little tighter.

  “Darling,” she said. “Danger.”

  And she drifted back into sleep. Her almond eyes must have returned to Odessa, where that stinking bureaucrat, Antonescu, had built a ballet school in a world without carrots or potatoes or borscht. Anastasia danced in a desert …

  Isaac sat in the dark, waited. Ah, he heard a noise. It had to be Bernardo, skulking back to finish the job before Margaret had the chance to come out of her coma. Bernardo could get through the police detail outside Margaret’s door. All he had to do was show his shield.

  But it wasn’t Bernardo. Another badass wandered through the door.

  “How are you, homey?” Isaac asked from his privileged seat in the dark.

  “Uncle Isaac,” Alyosha said. He didn’t seem startled.

  “Who let you out of Peekskill Manor?”

  “I escaped.”

  “Homey, you shouldn’t lie … you’re Bernardo’s little man, aren’t you? It was Bernardo who let you out of that reform school. And he couldn’t have done it with a gold shield from the NYPD. They don’t like New York City cops in Peekskill. He had another fucking ID.”

  “I think so,” Alyosha said. “A piece of plastic.”

  “With the FBI’s insignia and coat of arms.”

  “Uncle,” Alyosha said, “everybody’s scared of the FBI.”

  “And what was your mission, homey?”

  “To see if the bald lady was still alive.”

  “She isn’t bald,” Isaac said. “She has to cut her hair short … but how did you get past the detail of cops?”

  “They know me, Uncle. They’ve seen me with you.”

  “And Bernardo counted on that, didn’t he? That the cops would consider you my own little man. How much is he paying you?”

  “Don’t talk silver, Uncle. Bernardo rescued me from that children’s jail in the Bronx.”

  “And destroyed your brother’s gang.”

  “Can’t be helped. That’s the casualties of war.”

  “Homey, I took you into the Merliners, I let you live in my mansion.”

  “I know,” Alyosha said. “But I met him before I met you … in the Bronx.”

  “And a Bronx cavalier had to figure what Bernardo would do if the lady opened her eyes.”

  “Yeah, I figured.”

  “And it didn’t even matter how that kind of shit might have hurt me.”

  “It mattered,” Alyosha said. “I wasn’t gonna tell Bernardo much. But I had to come here. He would have broken my neck.”

  “Where is he? Where’s the prince?”

  “On Sutton Place. With Clarice.”

  “And you were gonna phone him the news, huh? Bernardo’s messenger boy … you disappointed me, homey.”

  Isaac handed Alyosha to one of the guards outside the door. “Chain him to your chair. I’ll be right back.”

  Isaac dialed his chauffeur. “Mullins, get your ass down to Bellevue. You’re gonna ride Angel Carpenteros back to Peek skill Manor. And I don’t want you to do it alone. Bring two or three cops from the mansion.”

  “Boss, is the kid public enemy number one?”

  “That’s exactly what you’re gonna tell the folks at Peekskill. He gets no privileges. He stays in his room. And if somebody shows up with plastic from the FBI, I want to hear about it.”

  Isaac returned to Margaret Tolstoy, kissed her eyes, and ran out of Bellevue.

  He didn’t get much flak from Clarice. She’d had a love affair all afternoon with the vodka in her fridge. He squeezed a couple of limes for her, and when she started to wobble, he carried her to the couch. “Where’s Bernardo?” she asked. “Where’s my sex slave?”

  “I’ll find him.”

  “You’ll have to salute me, you son of a bitch. I’ll make your life miserable soon as I’m First Lady. You’ll sleep in a tent.”

  “I’m like a Bedouin. I adore tents.”

  Isaac didn’t have to prowl across the apartment. It was Bernardo who found him.

  “I had a little talk with your homey,” Isaac said.

  There wasn’t even a ripple in Bernardo’s red mustache. He walked Isaac out onto the terrace to avoid the different bugs in Clarice’s walls.

  “How’s my favorite fucking kamikaze?”

  “I’m no strangler, boss.”

  “How did the Bull get to you, turn you around?”

  “Simple. He caught me selling drugs.”

  “Was it after Michael hired you to kill Clarice?”

  “Before,” Bernardo said, “long before.”

  “Jesus Christ. Then it was Bull Latham who had you destroy your old gang.”

  “Sure,” Bernardo said. “It was part of the President’s plan.”

  “Bull ran the Bronx brigade?”

  “Boss, I don’t know how many feds were involved. Don’t feel bad. They fuck everybody.”

  “Bull was monitoring your adventures with Clarice. He was right in the heart of Democratic country. So why the hell are we going to win?”

  “Calder’s unstable. He showed his prick to a couple of grandmas. He walked around naked in the middle of a White House tour. The Secret Service had to hide him in a toilet. Bull decided to deal with the Dems.”

  “And get rid of Isaac Sidel.”

  “It’s complicated, boss. The Prez was needling him. Called Bull a pussy. Said he couldn’t wind your clock. Bull made one phone call, and kamikazes start coming out of the woodwork.”

  “Who the fuck are they?”

  “Ex-Marines. A lady wrestler. Nasty mothers who travel from agency to agency …”

  “And you’ve been monitoring them. You’re their fucking liaison with the Bureau. You probably have a code name.”

  “Santa Claus.”

  “That’s grand,” Isaac said. “Did you train with them?”

  “Once or twice.”

  “Cut it out,” Isaac said. “You’re their paymaster. Bull unleashes them to pacify the Prez.”

  “That’s about it.”

  “Then finish the job,” Isaac said, standing against the terrace wall. “Kill me.”

  “I can’t,” Bernardo sa
id. “I wouldn’t know how.”

  “You knew how to stomp on Margaret. Why isn’t she dead?”

  “I didn’t have my heart in it.”

  “But you plucked Alyosha out of Peekskill and sent him to look at Margaret.”

  “Boss, if she wakes up, she could remember me, and I’d have complications.”

  “She already woke up. And she didn’t have to remember. I recognized your rotten trademark. Bernardo Dublin, the man who steps on people …”

  Isaac wanted to rip him off at the ears, hurl Bernardo over the edge of the balcony, send him into another kingdom, but he couldn’t. Bernardo was one of his own, a homicidal child. And Isaac was a politician now. Clarice would crack without Bernardo. America would have a mad First Lady.

  “Boss, she was closing in on the kamikazes. She would have connected me to them, thought I was a kamikaze who lived in Bull’s closet.”

  The Big Guy clutched one of Bernardo’s ears. “Who am I, homey?”

  “Sinbad.”

  “And what can Sinbad expect from his little sailor?”

  “Every fucking word the Bull whispers in my ear.”

  Isaac left him on the balcony with Clarice’s jungle plants and traveled as far as he could from Sutton Place South.

  23

  He had his own private room in the country club for bad boys, Peekskill Manor. The Big Guy wouldn’t let the courts return him to that Bronx shelter where he had to wear lipstick for the guards. No one touched Alyosha. He could order milk shakes, eat bowls of ice cream, but he couldn’t leave his room. Most of the other bad boys were rich, came from families who arrived in chauffeured limousines. They’d never heard of the Bronx, didn’t even know what a barrio was, and Alyosha had to live around strangers who hadn’t seen his wall art, his memorials to dead Latin Jokers, Jokers he had helped to kill.

  Marianna would move into the White House in a couple of months, and Alyosha was a boy without a country. The Big Guy hated him for becoming Bernardo’s rat, would never bring Marianna around again. Alyosha would have died without his crayons and pieces of colored chalk. He’d mark up the walls, like Michelangelo. But he didn’t have a ladder in Peek-skill, or any church to play with. He had nothing but his room in the bad boys’ hotel.

  He was much too sad to sketch his lost country of the Bronx, and so he used the walls around him to recreate the badlands where that savior in the orange pants had been killed. He drew the stones, the dead streets, housing projects like thick, heavy needles scratching the sky. He drew the police station that stood at the edge of the badlands like some murderous lighthouse. He thrust the Brooklyn Bridge and the canyons of Wall Street into the background. But he wouldn’t draw people, not the young pyromaniacs who torched whatever isolated garden they could find, not the drug addicts, not the crazy, screaming old women and men, not the cops, not Benya Krik. It was only Alyosha himself who inhabited the gardenless garden on his walls, like some warden of the underworld. It couldn’t make him happy, but all his furious markings kept his mind off Marianna.

  And while he colored in the last remaining patches, he heard a voice.

  “The Maldavanka. I can’t believe it.”

  It was the Big Guy, groaning as usual. Marianna was with him, and Alyosha hadn’t even noticed, that’s how blind his art could make him.

  “Don’t I get a kiss?”

  The crayon broke in his hand. He wanted to cry. He hugged Marianna, whirled her around his fancy cell.

  “Darling,” she said, while she was still in Alyosha’s arms, “can’t you disappear? I have things to discuss with my fiancé.”

  “Marianna, you know the rules. If I leave, you have to leave with me.”

  “Then shut your eyes, or crawl under the bed.”

  Alyosha smiled. Isaac was almost as human as Raskolnikov, the rat who lived in a shoebox. “Marianna, don’t be hard on the Big Guy. He’s practically given his life to the United States.”

  “And what about me? I have to walk with him, hand in hand. My feet hurt, and I never get to see you … Uncle Isaac, can’t you get him out of this hellhole?”

  “No court will give him to me. And if we steal Alyosha, we’ll lose all control and he’ll end up in a joint with barbed wire. Peekskill Manor isn’t such a hellhole.”

  “It is to me,” Marianna said.

  He couldn’t walk away with Alyosha, and he didn’t want to. That Bronx cavalier was still devoted to Bernardo, but Marianna was in love with him. And Isaac couldn’t even close his eyes. A kamikaze might come into the room. He had to stroll around like some sheriff with his finger near his gun. Margaret couldn’t kill kamikazes while she was in a coma, and she couldn’t return to Isaacs bed. He’d have to kidnap her from the hospital one of these days, ask her to become his personal huntress. They’d hunt in the Maldavanka, in the frozen fields. To hell with the White House. Isaac and his lady would hunt for love. Ah, what’s the use? The fucking Democrats would find them …

  Alyosha stared at Isaac. “Uncle, don’t be sad. The whole rotten planet’s a prison cell.”

  The leaves had started to fall. Isaac could already feel winter in his bones. The election was two weeks away. People couldn’t stop clutching his hand. He was hooked into the Democratic circuit again. Michael called him every afternoon. “Kid, they’re talking landslide. Calder won’t even take Texas … or his home state.”

  “Michael, let’s not gloat. Calder might surprise us.”

  “He’s a dead man.”

  And Isaac began to believe in J. Barton Grossvogel lost his footing on Elizabeth Street. He was shoved out of the precinct, offered a captaincy in the Bronx. He grabbed his pension, retired. The Bull had deserted Calder and signaled to the NYPD that he wanted Bart out of the way. Isaac danced in his own bedroom … until he discovered the name of the new captain. Douglas Knight had come out of retirement to pilot Elizabeth Street. And Isaac felt betrayed.

  The Dems had been dealing behind his back. He didn’t even go downtown to congratulate Captain Knight. He avoided Elizabeth Street. Barton’s gang was still there. Sweets should have flopped the whole precinct, but he couldn’t tamper with Calder Cottonwood’s favorite toy.

  Isaac abandoned his schedule. He wouldn’t fly to Albuquerque with the little first lady and address a bunch of environmentalists. He went into the Maldavanka. He could only breathe in the badlands. He couldn’t find one falling leaf. He had the memory of Alyosha’s mural in his head. Alyosha had drawn a black moon over the Maldavanka. Isaac felt like a citizen of that moon … with a rat he carried in a shoebox under his arm. Soon he’d have his own staff at the White House, his own suite that Martin Boyle had already nicknamed The Kremlin.

  “Sir,” Boyle had said, “Michael won’t be able to maneuver around you.”

  “Boyle, he’ll bury me.”

  “Not Sinbad the Sailor. Not Sidel.”

  Isaac kept walking under Alyosha’s black moon. A police car bumped behind him. Captain Knight climbed out of the car, wearing medals that Bart Grossvogel might have worn.

  “Cap, keep away from me.”

  “You didn’t even come to my housewarming. Sweets was there.”

  “What about Tim Seligman? He’s your godfather. It was Tim who choreographed that stunt at the Waldorf, wasn’t it?”

  “No. I’d come to kill the President. But Isaac Sidel got in the way. You saw my escape route. I used the kitchen.”

  “And I found ten or fifteen chefs. You were one of them. It was Timmy who’d arranged that little cooking school.”

  “You’re blind. It wasn’t Tim. I hid in a closet. Isaac, that kitchen was a mile long.”

  “Nobody arrests you. Sweets tears up your retirement papers. And you’re back in harness, right where Dougy worked.”

  “Did I have a choice? How long would I have survived without the Democrats?”

  “It was a lalapalooza, sitting next to Timmy at the first debate, in the same fucking hotel where you’d nearly whacked the Prez.”

  �
��That was Michael’s touch.”

  “I can imagine. He almost brought down Columbia University … Doug, what the hell are you doing here?”

  “I can finish what Dougy started.”

  “He was an outcast in orange pants. You’re a police captain with all of Barton Grossvogel’s gang.”

  “I’ll scatter them, Isaac, one or two at a time … I’ll help the poor, bring life back into the badlands. Trust me.”

  The captain returned to Elizabeth Street. And for an instant Isaac wished he had his own Odessa and could become a bandit who burnt down police stations. But he was only a guy with a Glock. Isaac Sidel. A shadow seemed to flirt with him, shove in and out of the Maldavanka’s dunes. “Of course,” Isaac muttered. Where else would a kamikaze trap him? Who would have heard Isaacs screams at his own little strangulation party? Was it a man this time? Or another woman with horseshoe triceps?

  “What’s your name?”

  “Martin Boyle.”

  “Jesus,” Isaac said, “are you following me? I thought you were a strangler.”

  “I’m paid to follow you, sir.”

  Isaac let Raskolnikov out of the shoebox. The rat jumped into the air and landed on Isaac’s neck. His eyes seemed to burn in the blue dusk.

  “You won’t be able to bring him into the White House, sir.”

  “I’m aware of that. But I’d like to enjoy Raskolnikov while I can.”

  And Isaac plunged deeper into the dusk, like some hooky player who would soon be sentenced to four full years of school. He didn’t hear the familiar shuffle of a Secret Service man’s shoes.

  “Are you still with me, Boyle?”

  He couldn’t hear a sound.

  “Are you with me?”

  “Yes, Mr. President.”

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Isaac Sidel Novels

  Part One

  1

  VICTORIES MEANT LITTLE TO ISAAC Sidel. He despised election campaigns, with their pomp and panoply, their bitter battles. He went up to the Bronx without his Secret Service man. He loved to stand on some hill and look down upon the firebombed streets. All that desolation seemed to soothe him. The Big Guy needed­ a strong pinch of chaos. That meadowland of gutted buildings had a strange beauty, like a diorama of brick teeth.