But a country road mystified him. Isaac walked with his teeth near the ground. God knows why he was traveling with a curl in his spine, like a hunchback? Was it to make himself less of a target for Coote’s men? He looked up once and saw the corrugated roof of a house. He’d stumbled upon a castle in Screeb. Castledermott. That’s what Annie Powell had said.
The castle had a yellow lake. Isaac heard a plop in the water. A man was fishing the lake, a small man with boots up to his arse. He would stare into that yellowness and grunt. “Come on up, me beauties.” He was a fisherman without a fishing rod. He worked with a net and a plain billy club. He smacked at the water from time to time. But the net wouldn’t fill. It was a senseless occupation. The man hadn’t struggled with one lousy fish.
He stood near the rim of the lake. He was deaf, deaf to anything that didn’t come from the water. Isaac could have plucked hairs off the man’s head.
“Afternoon to you, McNeill.”
An eyebrow knit for a moment. Then the face relaxed. “Ah, sonny, I was expecting you …”
“Am I talking too loud? I wouldn’t want to disturb the fish.”
“But that’s the point,” Coote said, swinging his billy club. “I’d like to disturb them with this.” He had a look of total menace as he bit into his jaw.
“Are you murdering salmon these days, Mr. Coote McNeill?”
The Fisherman eyed Isaac with disgust. “Not the salmon … I’m going after carp. They destroy a lake, sucking in the mud. Vermin is what they are, filthy animal fish. They can grow fat and live to fifty. So I club them in the head.”
“You’ve been banging at the water, but I don’t see many carp in your net.”
“That’s because they’re tricky bastards. They keep to the bottom. They dirty the lake and drive out all my valuable fish.”
“Why don’t you hire Tim Snell to club the water with you?… you might get a few more hits.”
“Sonny, I don’t need Tim to clear a lake. He has other business.”
“I know,” Isaac said. “He had to write a telegram and wire up the king …”
The Fisherman continued to slap water with the billy club. The lake turned brown near his boots; no fifty-year-old carp came up from the mud.
“Was Tim going to wire me up too?”
“You’re daft,” the Fisherman said. “Sonny, I could have had you killed ages ago.”
“What about those shotguns you delivered to Centre Street?”
“That was nothin’ but a tease … you’re too precious to put underground. Jesus, the chances I had to get at you … the great Isaac roosting in Times Square with charcoal on his face. It’s Mangen that kept you alive. Dennis’ baby is what you are … and don’t you get bright ideas about catching me alone in the water. I have lads in the house. If I whistle to them, sonny boy, they’ll shovel out a grave for you … you’ll rest with all the carp.”
“Why did you summon me to Ireland, Coote?”
“To talk … Mangen was up on his haunches, so I had to get out.”
“You didn’t even have time to pack your fishing rods. It’s a pity, but I had your office boys pick the rods off the wall. Have they arrived?”
“Not yet. You owe me something, sonny. Don’t get comical with me.” He thumped his chest with the billy club. “This old man made you Police Commissioner.”
“Sure, you and Sammy fucked Tiger John and pinned his badge on me. It was a good cover for all of you. I come in and you ass off to your castle in Screeb and rid your lake of carp. A charming life. You gambled that I had enough affection for an old Mayor not to harm him. I couldn’t prosecute Sammy if I wanted to. He’s made his pact with Dennis. He won’t starve when the money runs out. Rebecca will provide for him. That leaves you. Now what is it you need from me? You have your yellow lake …”
“I don’t want my picture in the newspapers. I’m in seclusion here. I’ll have me an angler’s club. I’ll start up a bit of a hotel. Lease my salmon rights to worthy fishermen … Isaac, the whore shit is dead. Why rake it up? Mangen has Tiger John. He’s satisfied.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t disturb you, Chief. You’re safe. You butchered everyone around that could do you harm. You were like a pope in New York City. The Mayor kissed your hand. And you took every boy from my office and farmed them out. They had to ride the ferry to work. You were smart. You left me a boy or two until the very end, so Isaac wouldn’t know.”
“Sonny, it aint my fault you didn’t come to Headquarters. I couldn’t have done a thing with John if you’d been there. But we could count on you. If you weren’t sleeping with the Guzmanns, you’d be in some other filthy pile. You could never sit on your ass. And don’t accuse me of butchering people. You butchered when you had to … like the rest of us. You killed your own boy, Blue Eyes, because that daughter of yours was crazy about him, and you couldn’t stand the idea.”
“The Guzmanns killed Coen,” Isaac muttered into the lake.
“Indeed. Nasty souls they were … they made chocolate bars in the Bronx … and you had to declare war on them, Papa Guzmann and his five idiot boys.”
“Papa gave me a worm.”
“You deserved it,” McNeill said. “Don’t play Isaac the Pure with me.”
Isaac watched the billy club slap water again. The net dropped down and rose up empty.
“There aint that much difference between us,” the Fisherman said. “I took for myself, and you used the Department for your own imbecile cause. You killed, you maimed, you gouged out eyes, sonny boy.”
“But I didn’t wire a man to a bench, just to show off.”
“I had to dispose of him, and one way’s as good as another. He was getting to be a nuisance, you know. He falls in love with a shopgirl and we have to suffer for it. What kind of king is that? He was a gutter boy before I picked him up. The Department put him through college.”
“I got him into Columbia … not you, or the Department.”
“Piss on your brains,” the Fisherman said. “You were always a little slow behind all that cleverness. Dermott belonged to me and Ned O’Roarke.”
Isaac stood an inch out of the water, his toes collecting mud. He’d inherited his job from O’Roarke, the old First Deputy Commissioner. He was Ned’s protégé, an apostate Jew among the Irish. Did O’Roarke hide Dermott under one knee without telling Isaac?
Coote grinned at that slump in Isaac’s shoulders. “Ned made a Yalie out of him. It was a bit too close having him in town. So we groomed the lad in New Haven. A little gentleman he was. We let him steal. We let him have his books. We let him run the nigger whores with Arthur Greer.”
“And when O’Roarke died, you stuck your hand in the pot … and pulled out a pretty penny.”
“Would you have me chewing gumballs for the rest of my life? The king was my creation. Tell me why I shouldn’t benefit from it? Him and the nigger got to be millionaires. Boys of thirty carrying hundreds of thousands in their pockets. Then he gets shopgirl Annie for a mistress and a wife. I sit him in Dublin because Mangen is coming on to us, and he neglects our business over Annie Powell. Imagine, going itchy for a stupid cunt that’s nothin’ but a whore, when he can have any woman on this earth. Him with education, money, and a gypsy’s eye.”
“Annie,” Isaac said, “what did you do about Annie Powell?”
“Jesus, the girl saw my face … I couldn’t let her whore in the street with Mangen’s shooflies running everywhere. I paid a boy in a taxi cab to climb up on her back …”
Isaac’s toes fell into the water. Coote wasn’t an idiot. He could sense the rage that was coming over Isaac. The “Commish”’s forehead swelled out like a diseased melon with tiny bumps on it. “Mother Mary,” the Fisherman said, “you didn’t go and fall in love with that whore, did you now?”
He raised his billy club. It was a warning to Isaac. Keep out of me lake. But Isaac rushed at him. The billy club landed at the base of Isaac’s neck. He felt a crunching in his scapula. His head tumbled down. But he s
hook off that motherfucking blow. The billy club whistled behind Isaac’s ear. The old man had been too eager. He missed his chance to brain the “Commish.” Isaac slapped the billy club away. He grabbed the old man by the roots of his scalp and shoved that head into the yellow lake. He kept it there without a touch of mercy, using his elbow as a fulcrum to dig between Coote’s shoulder blades. Bubbles rose around Isaac’s fist. Coote’s arms jerked under the water. Then the old man went still. Isaac gave Coote’s body to the salmon and the carp. He didn’t see any signs of movement from the house. The chimneys revealed one lousy tail of smoke.
Isaac stepped out of the water. His shoulder humped up on him. Coote’s old men could have ripped the nose off his face. But nobody ran after Isaac. He beat the ground with his shoes until he arrived at his little French car. He mumbled a benediction to the Irish. God bless all little cars with the steering wheels on the right. Then he drove out of Screeb.
30
HE got past the customs booth at Kennedy. Where were the guys with handcuffs and the warrant for his arrest? No one touched the “Commish.” It was a good year for murder. They let you strangle old men in the water these days.
The “Commish” got his chauffeur on the line. “Christianson, it’s me. Turn on your sirens. I’ll expect you outside Aer Lingus in eighteen minutes.”
Christianson wouldn’t disappoint his boss. Isaac was tucked away in his rooms at 1 Police Plaza before his hands could turn cold. A button lit up on his telephone console. It was the Mayor’s “hot line” to Police Headquarters. Isaac could have let that button glow day and night. He banged on the console and growled into the phone. “Sidel here.”
“Laddie, how are you?”
“Grand,” Isaac said.
“Have you heard the news?… McNeill expired. The poor sod drowned in his own fishing pool.”
“Did you say drowned? That’s a terrible pity.”
“Well, the Sons of Dingle are paying to have the corpse fly home. He wanted to be buried here, you know. We’ll be having a service for him, Isaac. At St. Pat’s.” Isaac had been rubbed in Kelly green. He knew all the rituals of Manhattan Irish politicians and cops. They always sing their prayers for the dead at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
“Aint he entitled to an Inspector’s Funeral?”
Only Isaac could call out the color guard to honor a dead cop. The PC plucked his chin. He wasn’t sorry that he’d pushed McNeill’s face into the water. I’d murder him again and again. But why should he forgo the honor guard for Coote? Thieves had to be laid to rest like any other man.
Isaac said goodbye to the Mayor and rang up Jennifer Pears. He excused himself for missing lunch with her. “I was out of the country. Swear to Moses … had to make a short trip.”
“Trip?” she said.
“To Mother Ireland.”
“Isaac, is that where your people are from?”
“They might as well … I’m Irish to the bone.”
Jennifer laughed at him. “Come for lunch … right now.”
Isaac screamed for Christianson, but he couldn’t escape from Headquarters so fast. His mentor, Marshall Berkowitz, was in the vestibule. The PC wouldn’t run out on Marsh. An aide brought him in to Isaac. Marsh stared at the furnishings of a Commissioner’s office: the flags, trophies, pictures, drapes, the huge desk of burled oak that had belonged to Teddy Roosevelt when he was Commissioner of Police.
“Marsh, you’ll have to forgive the décor. It’s Tiger John’s. I haven’t had time to move in.” Isaac looked at the dean’s broken shoes. “Is it the wife?… Marsh, has she disappeared again?”
The dean nodded to Isaac. He had bubbles on his lips.
“Why didn’t you let Mangen know? His shooflies kidnapped her out of my living room … don’t you remember that?”
“Mangen says he can’t help me now that you’re the Commish.”
Isaac put the keys to his apartment on Teddy Roosevelt’s desk. “Go to Rivington Street, Marsh. She’s probably there. I can lend you a few boys and a squad car. I’m as good as Dennis when it comes to kidnapping people.”
He didn’t like betraying Sylvia, but he had to give her over to Marsh. That fucking dean is the father of us all. He taught Isaac, Mangen, and little Dermott the tyranny of moocows coming down the road. Marsh was a different man when he had his nose in a text. He could tear your lungs out with a few words on Mr. Joyce. Did I ever tell you about Joyce’s eyepatch? Don’t believe his biographers. That was a perfectly good eye under the piece of cloth. He wore it to impress the beggars of Paris. So he could squeeze pennies out of them. Joyce was the biggest sponge in the world.
He was late for Jennifer. They had to rush through nibblings of hollandaise sauce. Jenny’s boy would be home from school in half an hour. It was curious business. In and out of bed, like a squirrel in the trees. Do squirrels have mistresses too? What did it mean when you could feel a child in your mistress’ belly? And how come the worm was lying so still? It hadn’t stirred since Isaac touched ground in New York City. Did the motherfucker pick up some Irish disease that was shrinking its head and tails? That little purring monster used to adore Jennifer Pears. Now the monster wouldn’t purr.
Isaac could hunger for Jennifer without the participation of a worm. She kissed the bruise on his shoulder, but the Commissioner couldn’t come. He stayed hard inside Jenny until the doorbell rang. “It’s Alex,” she said. She got into her panties and a blue robe to greet her little boy. Isaac dressed and walked into the parlor. Alexander peered at him from the long prow of a rain hat.
“Remember me?” Isaac said. “I’m Dick Tracy.”
Jennifer laughed and unzippered the rain hat. “He’s a liar. Call him Isaac. He’s the Police Commissioner.”
Alexander pulled on his nose. “Do you have a gun?”
“Not today,” Isaac said. “Commissioners don’t have to wear a gun.”
Isaac seemed to diminish for the boy. He went into his room to play, while his mother was stranded in the parlor with Isaac the Pure. The robe dropped to Jennifer’s belly. Isaac sucked on one nipple with a mad concentration. His pants were suddenly on the floor. He lost his inhibitions with that boy a room away. He clung to Jennifer and was able to come.
“How did you hurt your shoulder?”
“It’s a gift from Ireland,” Isaac said. “I had to kill a man. He was a thief and a son of a bitch.”
“Do you often go on business trips like that?… I suppose it’s all right. They’ll have to forgive you. We can’t have two Commissioners sitting in jail. The City would fall apart … who are you going to murder next?”
“I’m not sure.” He kissed Jennifer on the mouth, and it was like that first kiss they’d had near the elevator, with his tongue down her throat. A girl could hardly breathe.
“What’s going to happen to our kid?”
“Nothing. I’ll have it, and it’ll stay with me and Mel.”
“Can’t I be one tiny portion of its father, boy or girl?”
“No.”
Isaac left with a scowl on his face that could have eaten through a wall. Jenny grabbed him by his good shoulder. “Weekends are out,” she said. “But you can come on Monday … and the day after that.”
Isaac crept into the elevator with Monday fixed in his head. Jennifer locked the door. She gathered the ends of her robe and pulled them close to her until she was ready for her boy. She strolled in and out of mirrors, catching the little puffs under her eyes. A lady of thirty-three. She had a husband who lusted after fifty-year-old mayoresses. Would he move into Gracie Mansion after Ms. Rebecca got rid of Sam and rolled her carpets in? They could have their politics on a Persian rug. Jenny walked into the toy room to be with Alex. He was almost five, her little man. He had a set of Lionel trains that wound across the room like the territories of an unfathomable world. Tracks snaked into one another. Tunnels bloomed. Alex presided over every switch. He could make bridges collapse, have engines explode and spit out their parts, and torture a caboo
se with his system of flags and lights. You didn’t need a mother when you had Lionel trains.
She stooped over Alex with Isaac’s seed dripping out of her. She mussed his hair. “Want an Oreo sandwich, little guy?” Alex was too busy attending all his different tracks to think about food.
Isaac was on the steps of St. Pat’s, surrounded by his own Police. Fifty captains had come out in uniform to honor the great McNeill. The Shamrock Society had black handkerchiefs and mourning bands. The Irish would never disappoint their dead. Isaac could hear a murderous gnawing behind him, a gnawing of many throats. The Sons of Dingle stood in their eight-piece caps. They were with Timothy Snell and the Retired Sergeants Association. Old Tim mashed his throat as hard as any Dingle Bay boy. His eyes were shot with blood. “Timmy,” Isaac said, “did you fly in with the corpse? It’s a pity he went and drowned himself.”
“Murderer,” Tim pronounced under his breath. “The best Chief we ever had. He meant no harm to you … Isaac, you better not stand in the open too long. You might twist your leg and fall. You’d have a lovely time bumping down St. Pat’s.”
“Quiet, you prick. This aint a castle in Screeb. I rule here. The Irish sit under me. You know, Tim, I keep having this dream. It’s about little Dermott. He’s still wired up in the park, just the way you left him. He says, ‘Isaac, do me a favor. If you catch Tim Snell, wire him to Delancey Street’… go on back to your funeral party before I shut down the Dingle Bay and steal your fucking sauna. You won’t have a room to piss in. Move, I said.”
Old Tim shrugged at Isaac and joined his fellow mourners. He marched up the stairs and went into the big church with the Shamrocks, the Sons of Dingle, and the Retired Sergeants Association. Earlier Isaac’s honor guard had raised the bier out of the funeral truck, struggling with it on their shoulders until they got it into St. Pat’s. Isaac didn’t go inside. He’d lend his honor guard, but he wouldn’t join the Requiem for Coote. He remained on the steps with his hands in his pockets.
Secret Isaac Page 21