El Bronx (The Isaac Sidel Novels)

by Jerome Charyn

  “Trust me. I’d woo her back. But if I’m gonna play backstop to Billy the Kid, I can’t afford a murder in the family right now.”

  “You cold-blooded prick. I should have let you rot in jail … the great apostle to Uncle Ho.”

  “Isaac, have you ever read Uncle Ho? He was colder than I am … but beautiful. He said a single ribbon can destroy a whole chain of events. And I’ve been looking for that ribbon all my life.”

  J. Michael stood up, sucked on his screwdriver, and prepared to board his plane. Isaac was still confused about Fantômas.

  He called Special Services on the ride back to Manhattan, tracked his son-in-law to a theatre on Broadway, had him paged after the first act, went across the street to a Greek diner where he could order a chopped salad with feta cheese and nurse a glass of pink wine with resin while he waited for Barbarossa.

  Joe entered the diner looking like a dream in a hand-painted tie (Isaac’s own daughter must have found the tie for Joe). He always wore black leather, like any homicide detective, until Marilyn started grooming him. Now he’d appear in powder blue and parrot green.

  “Joey, is it Madonna tonight, or Michelle Pfeiffer?”

  “Close. A princess from Surinam. She’s fourteen.”

  “Great. We could kidnap her for the Merliners.”

  “Dad, I want my old squad … every cop I meet is scared shit of me. I’m worse than the plague. Isaac Sidel’s son-in-law. I’ll die without the street.”

  “You have Marilyn.”

  “Dad, we weren’t discussing my wife.”

  “Joey, I didn’t ground you, swear to God. Somebody thinks they’re doing me a favor.”

  “Somebody like Sweets?”

  Sweets had been Isaac’s First Deputy and was now Commish. He wouldn’t let Isaac near Police Plaza. But Isaac had obliged him to reassign Joe. Isaac didn’t want his son-in-law running across roofs. Joe was Marilyn’s tenth or eleventh husband, and Isaac couldn’t bear to see her become a widow. Besides, he was really fond of Barbarossa.

  “I have a little work for you, Joey.”

  “Dad, you initiating me into the Ivanhoes? Should I cross my heart and swear to uphold all your secrets?”

  “I don’t have secrets. I want you to follow a certain lady, dog her steps, go wherever she goes.”

  Barbarossa smiled. Isaac’s son-in-law looked like Gable in Gone With the Wind, with little scars on his face and a white glove that hid a war wound from Vietnam.

  “Dad, is it a new romance?”

  “I’m engaged to Margaret Tolstoy.”

  “But she’s missing.”

  “I’ll get her back. This lady is the wife of J. Michael Storm.”

  “Your old student?”

  “J. was never my student. I helped him stay out of jail. Somebody is trying to off his wife.”

  “And you think Storm is behind it?”

  “I don’t know. But the striker has a very strange MO. He wears a hood when he calls on Clarice … like Fantômas.”

  “And you expect me to find the bum? … I’d rather guard the princess from Surinam. Tell the lady to go to the police.”

  “You are the police.”

  “No I’m not. I’m Sidel’s son-in-law, which means I have to wear a cape like Captain Marvel and jump into one of the mysteries you like to manufacture. Dad, leave it alone. You’re not the Pink Commish anymore.”

  “Joey, Clarice has a child. I’m worried about her. I don’t want this fucking Fantômas tiptoeing across her bedroom. He’s a regular acrobat, climbing up walls … do me a favor. Gimme Fantômas, and I’ll get you back into the squad room. You can catch as many homicides as you want.”

  “Meanwhile I’m a floater … in the service of Sidel.”

  “One more thing. We won’t tell the lady we’re watching her. It’s between you, me—”

  “And Fantômas,” Barbarossa said.

  Isaac scribbled Clarice’s address and handed Barbarossa a photograph he’d taken of her and Marianna at a meeting of the Merliners. Joe was startled: he could barely tell mother and daughter apart; they made a gorgeous attack team.

  “They look like twins … Dad, Marilyn doesn’t like it when you forget to show up for dinner.”

  “I’m the mayor. I have a million things on my mind.”

  “Like rinsing your mouth with retsina and dreaming of maniacs who climb up walls.”

  “Joey, I never dream … just help me out.”

  “Then don’t disappoint Marilyn again … next Friday. Bring a date or a couple of your brats.”

  “I’ll have to look at my agenda.”

  “Fuck your agenda, Dad.”

  He kissed Isaac on the forehead, walked out of the diner, and went back to his princess from Surinam.

  9

  Billy the Kid began to climb on Isaac’s back. The governor demanded that the mayor meet with him. Isaac didn’t respond. He was thinking of the hospitals that Billy the Kid wanted to close in the bitterest sections of Brooklyn and the Bronx. Billy had the bankers behind him. The hospitals were bleeding money. There were empty beds all over the place. But Isaac knew about the creative arithmetic that Billy liked to practice. The citizens of Brownsville and El Bronx could barely afford to live or die in hospitals that had been built for them. They could never get past the bureaucratic maze. And Isaac couldn’t provide them with medical insurance. He wasn’t that much of a magician.

  He ducked Billy the Kid. He sat in his chopper, rode above the city, where he was safe. Isaac had a chopper at his command night and day. He did his best thinking in the sky, with his ass on a bucket seat, the wind beneath his collar, seagulls scattering above him, scared of the blades. He would land on the roofs of certain projects, watch the grim domain that was part of Isaac’s own housing stock. He was the pharaoh here, the landlord of brittle, broken buildings that he would have loved to dynamite. And while he was on one particular roof, a pair of choppers swooped out of the sky. They were bigger than Isaac’s, crowded with policemen in civilian suits. Isaac wondered if the Secret Service was already guarding Billy the Kid, who hadn’t entered a single primary. Or perhaps the governor copied from Isaac, and had his own cadre of Ivanhoes. It didn’t really matter. They were brutal men with glass guns, those Nighthawks that Dominican druglords favored. But these weren’t Dominicans. They wore little radios plugged into their ears. They surrounded Isaac. He got out of his chopper and entered a bigger one, where Billy the Kid sat with a bear rug on his knees.

  “Isaac, you shouldn’t fuck with the future president of the United States.”

  “Win one primary before you start to brag.”

  “The primaries are a booby trap. I don’t plan to self-destruct. I’ll have all the delegates I need.”

  “A closed convention, huh Billy?”

  “Not at all. After the candidates start knocking each other off, you’ll have one lone eagle left. Billy the Kid.”

  “And who’s going to introduce Billy the Kid, nominate him?”

  “You. My law and order man. You’ll dazzle the convention.”

  “Billy,” Isaac said, clutching his own heart, “I’d rather go blind than nominate you for president. You’re a murderer and a maniac.”

  “And who isn’t?” said Billy the Kid, crinkling his blue eyes. He’d gotten rid of a black prostitute who might have compromised him and his election plans. He’d had men and women beaten up in order to erase the crooked lines of his past. He was capable of losing Sidel, pitching him into the ocean. Isaac was already seasick.

  “Have your fun, Billy. But I’ll tear your throat out the next time you kidnap me.”

  “Kidnap you, Sidel? Is that what you call a friendly chat over the skies of Brooklyn?… you’ll play the good little kitten and nominate me. Because if you don’t, your baseball war will never end.”

  “Ah, that’s why J. Michael wasn’t so eager to negotiate. You have him on a leash.”

  “A very short one. He’d love to be my vice-president.”
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  “Billy, I wouldn’t count too much on J. He was the meanest student radical I ever met. He’s liable to topple you on the way to the White House.”

  “Let me worry about J. Michael … do you want the Bronx?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then behave,” Billy said. His eyes were killer blue. He signaled to his pilot, and Billy’s chopper began to dance toward the housing project.

  “And what if the strike goes on and on?” Isaac asked as the chopper bounced onto the same roof where Billy the Kid had found him.

  “Then you’re home free, Sidel. You can boycott the convention.”

  Isaac stared into the wind. Billy’s chopper began to rise like a bewildered bumblebee.

  “What about Margaret Tolstoy?” Isaac asked, but Billy could no longer hear him. Isaac continued to shout. “Do you know where she is?”

  Billy the Kid waved to him, and Isaac returned to his own small chopper. He crossed into the Bronx, landed on a knoll in Claremont Park, climbed out, and picked up Alyosha, who was hiking on Featherbed Lane.

  “Come with me.”

  Alyosha didn’t complain. He followed El Caballo into Claremont Park, climbed into the chopper, and rode away from this ratland. He’d never sat in the middle of the sky, next to clouds that could have been candy. El Bronx looked like a long, curling plain, where even the rawest building had its own crooked geometry. He couldn’t admit it to Uncle Isaac, but riding on a chopper over Paulito’s territories was better than Disneyland, and he didn’t even have to leave the Bronx. The chopper scraped its shadow on the roofs, like a dark, scratchy bird, but Isaac wouldn’t let him lean over his bucket seat and follow each scratch.

  They bumped along the Harlem River into that canyon town called Manhattan, and Alyosha didn’t like it, because his geometry was lost among all the outcroppings of glass and steel and stone. He saw roofs and ceilings, but it was hard to find any floors … until the chopper plunked down into a narrow field next to the United Nations, where a limo was waiting for El Caballo. But Isaac wouldn’t get into a car. He dragged Alyosha up to Sutton Place South, barked at the doorman, and his favorite little Merliner, Marianna Storm, came floating out of the elevator with her silver medallion and long white socks. She smiled at Alyosha and let El Caballo kiss her hand.

  “Hello, princess,” Isaac said.

  “Don’t flatter. I’m not in the mood.”

  She laced her own arm in Alyosha’s and they walked downtown with El Caballo beside them, people staring at her and the mayor. They climbed up a hill near Grand Central and arrived at a tiny village that looked like Featherbed Lane. It had its own garden and bicycle shop. Alyosha examined brick walls that would have been terrific for his murals.

  “Your Honor, who lives here?”

  “It’s Tudor City,” Isaac said.

  “Yeah, yeah, but I’m not worried about names. Who lives here?”

  “Doctors, dentists … and my daughter.”

  “And they’re not about to hire me.”

  “Hire you for what?”

  “To decorate their walls … don’t they have a coupla dead sons and daughters here? Uncle, couldn’t they use some war memorials?”

  “I’ll ask around,” Isaac said.

  The buildings looked like several of the castles Alyosha had seen in the Bronx, on Kingsbridge Terrace and Fort Independence Street, castles that were sixty years old, and must have housed rich people trying to escape the rot of Manhattan. Maybe Alyosha could find a castle somewhere for Paulito and himself. But he’d need a wider clientele than the Latin Jokers. Even if the Jokers dropped like flies, Alyosha could never get rich …

  A chiquita with brown eyes and curly hair came to the door. She had a very slight mustache. Alyosha admired the way she stood with one hand on her hip. El Caballo’s daughter, Marilyn the Wild. She’d married a cop who was as big a ballbuster as Bernardo Dublin. Joe Barbarossa, with a white glove on his hand.

  The chiquita served lamb chops around a big table. He liked her aroma as she hovered next to him and speared a lamb chop into his plate. He sipped lemonade with Marianna, while Marilyn drank whiskey and wine with Isaac and the ballbuster, who was very polite and didn’t wear his Glock to lunch. Marianna pinched Alyosha under the table.

  “Don’t you dare fall in love with Marilyn the Wild,” Marianna whispered. “She already has a man, in case you didn’t notice.”

  “I noticed,” Alyosha whispered back. A sadness suddenly gripped him, because he couldn’t even remember one family meal with his mom and pappy and Paulito. His mom started coughing blood into a napkin when he was a little kid and died coughing the same blood. It was Alyosha who had to prepare her meals while his pappy was out stealing television sets and Paulito was grabbing territory as the supreme general of the Jokers. Marilyn the Wild smelled like his mom, walked like his mom, with the same hippy motion.

  Isaac sat down with Barbarossa after lunch and Alyosha played gin rummy with Marianna and Marilyn the Wild. He tried not to listen to Isaac, but he couldn’t help himself. He was a born spy, married to the Bronx brigade.

  “Bernardo?” Isaac said. “I can’t believe it.”

  “Dad, it’s like his own private delicatessen … he comes and goes.”

  “But Clarice could have hired him to protect her from Fantômas.”

  “Yeah, and I could have a sex change and wear Madonna’s tits … Dad, he’s with her all the time. I tracked them to the Bronx zoo. They were humping in the fields, like grasshoppers.”

  “Shhh,” Isaac said, rolling his eyes in Marianna’s direction. But she wasn’t a snoop, like Alyosha.

  “You just don’t want to piece it together, Dad. You don’t want to see the whole cloth. I can’t tell you why Bernardo was there with his mask. Somebody could have been paying him to frighten her. But bingo! He likes what he sees …”

  “Joey, it doesn’t hold. It wasn’t the first time he met Clarice. He’s with Merlin, for Christ’s sake. I couldn’t have started it without him.”

  “Dad, you’re missing my point. It’s only while he’s Fantômas that he falls in love.”

  “Ah, you’re a fucking romantic.”

  “I’m not, but Bernardo is. And Clarice falls in love with the mask.”

  “So he comes to hurt Clarice and climbs onto the mattress with her.”

  “But isn’t that what Fantômas is all about?… danger and sex.”

  “Joey, don’t lecture, please … I’m disappointed in Bernardo.”

  “Dad, don’t your best pupils turn around and whack you in the head?”

  “All the time,” Isaac muttered, and the party was over. He collected Marianna and Alyosha and started to leave, but Marilyn cornered him.

  “Did you enjoy the meal?”

  “Delicious.”

  “Isaac, we hardly talked.”

  “We’re too much alike to even bother. I look at you, and you look at me. It’s better than talk.”

  “And we’ll go on avoiding each other all our lives … dancing on different planets. Go on, get out of here, Mr. Mayor.”

  She kissed Alyosha and Marianna Storm, held them both in her arms, and nudged them out the door.

  Isaac whisked them down the stone steps behind Tudor City and returned to that little heliport near the United Nations. El Caballo was taking Alyosha back into the sky, and baby Grushenka had decided to come along.

  As the chopper climbed, Marianna closed her eyes and clung to her bucket seat. Isaac had already strapped her in. Every idle boy on Sutton Place South, between the age of twelve and twenty, tried to court Marianna, and she only cared about an artist from the Bronx who sketched dead people and liked to eat with his hands. She looked at Alyosha, but he was building clouds inside his head. That’s what artists were like, she imagined. Always building clouds.

  “Alyosha,” she said, “can’t you dream about anything but your drawings?”

  It wasn’t drawings that he was dreaming of. It was Bernardo the ballbuster. Alyosha didn�
�t understand anything about masks. He saw that El Caballo was asleep, and he shouted in Marianna’s ear, above the churning of the blades. “Who’s Fantômas?”

  “My mother’s killer boyfriend,” she shouted back. “He loves to wear a mask.”

  Alyosha was still confused, but he grabbed baby Grushenka by the hand. “Could I be your Fantômas?”

  “Angel Carpenteros, you haven’t even kissed me yet.”

  Alyosha reached as far as he could in his bucket seat and kissed Marianna on the mouth, while El Caballo snored and the chopper rode above the Third Avenue Bridge.

  10

  Bernardo never intended to have his own little court at the motel. But he couldn’t shun the madres of Mt. Eden and Jerome, who stood outside his bungalow in the rain, without umbrellas or a shawl. The gate boy, Abdul, was terrified of them, because they looked like brujas with wet black hair. And when Bernardo arrived from his headquarters at Boro Hall and found their sad faces, he would invite them inside his bungalow for a cup of coffee and a dish of ice cream, lend them towels and his own hair dryer. Then he would ask, “Mothers, how can I help you?”

  The madres would group around his leather chair and deliver their tales of woe. And these tales grew worse once the Dominoes “parachuted” into El Bronx. The parachuters and their Dixie Cups were selling drugs to niños in the neighborhood, bothering little girls, and had raped a retarded twelve-year-old in a schoolyard on Walton Avenue.

  “Mothers, I would like to visit with the girl after you have finished your ice cream. She could tell me things about her attackers. I’m only a policeman. I need clues.”

  “She’s in a coma, Don Bernardo … but we can tell you things, important things. The one who attacked her had a milky eye … and a blue mustache.”

  “A blue mustache,” Bernardo repeated.

  “Calls himself Panther.”

  “Mothers, I will do my best … you will have no more panthers in the Bronx.”

  He kissed all the madres, who blessed him and gave Bernardo their holy beads to protect him from Panther. Bernardo had another dish of ice cream, put all the beads into his coat pocket, left his Glock on the chair, and summoned Abdul, who was a half-breed, like Bernardo himself. Abdul had an Egyptian mom and a dad from Panama, but he was a city wolf, a child of the barrios, a kamikaze who seemed to survive any suicide mission.