“I don’t care. It’s a fact of nature. I’m invulnerable because of you.” Leo shivered like a scarecrow in his loose shirt; he wasn’t even safe inside a goddamned jail. Isaac could reach into every hole. Manhattan was his honey jar.
“Leo, I saw our dad. He’s alive … doing portraits. He asked about you.”
A sound broke out of Leo that was almost a snarl. “I have no dad.”
Isaac was amazed by Leo’s churning jaw. “I say he’s alive.… Joel, Joel. I met him twice.”
Leo clutched the little pocket on Isaac’s vest. “There are no fucking Joels. Isaac, I’m warning you. Don’t get me mad.”
The pocket ripped. Isaac left his brother’s fingers inside the torn seams. The violence to Isaac’s pocket seemed to quiet Leo. He took his fingers away so he could cry into his knuckles. “Sophie’s in the hospital on account of him. She’d be a saner person if that miserable furrier hadn’t disappeared. You think she would have fallen in love with a junk shop? Isaac, you had your handgrips and your chess diagrams and your great chums, Philip and Mordecai. You didn’t need a thing. What about me? Brother, I was slow. I couldn’t hold a line of pawns, or make improvements in the Sicilian Defense. A father might have helped.”
Isaac grew restless under his brother’s scrutiny; he hadn’t come to argue over the existence of Joel. And why should he have to be ashamed of ancient skills? Isaac lost his prowess in chess twenty-five years ago. He turned policeman in the reception room, beginning to probe his baby brother.
“Where’s Marilyn? I know all about her moves. She visits you here. She jumps in and out of mama’s hospital room. Leo, tell me who’s putting her up? She’s too particular to hide in a garbage can. Somebody’s been keeping her day and night.”
“I can’t say.”
“Can’t, Leo? I don’t like that word. Are you shielding her from me? Remember where your privileges come from. I’m not blind. The jailors let you sneak uptown to Bellevue. Call it kindness, Leo, but I’m the one who put the idea into their heads. Not for your sake. It’s for mama. You’re her special boy. I didn’t want her to wake up in a stinking hospital without you around. Now tell me who the bastard is, the fuck who’s got my girl? Name him for me.”
“Isaac, go to hell.”
Isaac could have throttled Leo without wrinkling his career. With the First Dep behind him, the Chief had the right to bluster with impunity. Leo’s devotion to Marilyn gnawed at him. The Chief was a little jealous. Forty years I fight his battles, Isaac said to himself, and he picks Marilyn over me. Isaac’s love for his brother was mingled with a kind of criminality; fondness could turn to bile in a matter of seconds. The Sidels were a bitter crew.
“Leo, you’re taking advantage of me. There are tiny pricks and cunts out there who are looking to murder us. They got to Sophie. It won’t happen again. But don’t expect me to pamper you. I want your ass out of this jail. I’ll stroke the Commissioner of Corrections if I have to. I’ll fix it with your wife. Mama shouldn’t have to be in a room with strangers. You stay with her until I find those freaks. Leo, I give you three days. Then I’m going to tear the jail apart”
Isaac moved across the room with hops of his broad neck. The guards peeked in. They sidled up to Leo, surrounding him with sheepish looks. “Pinochle, Leo? We have four hands today. We’re ready to lose.”
Leo still had the shivers, but he wouldn’t disappoint the guards. “Gentlemen, I’ll deal first.” The guards searched for folding chairs. Leo tucked in the corners of the deck. He was hoping pinochle would save these men. Melding flushes and marriages might ease down their tenor of the Chief.
The guards shivered as fast as Leo. They fumbled with the deck, throwing cards away. They couldn’t auction off their marriages, or bid for trumps. Isaac had murdered their afternoon.
7.
THE FBI man wouldn’t leave Isaac alone. He had his own pillow at Headquarters, and he carried it in and out of Isaac’s office. Newgate adored the Chief. Jumping from Bethesda, Maryland, into a universe of Jews, Irishmen, and black detectives, he wanted Isaac to understand that he wasn’t an ordinary Episcopalian. He claimed to be part Cherokee. Isaac’s men sniggered at this bit of exoticism; the threat of Indian blood couldn’t bring Newgate closer to them. He was made of straw, a Maryland idiot who stole words out of Isaac’s mouth. He couldn’t impress them with his talk of “burying” Amerigo Genussa and “sinking” Mulberry Street. Italians might be out of fashion in a year, and the FBI would be climbing trees for black militants and Puerto Rican nationalists.
Newgate squirmed on his pillow after a white nigger arrived in Isaac’s office, a white nigger in a blue suede suit. He had never come across such a weird creature in his life with the FBI. It was Wadsworth, the albino from Forty-second Street, hiding his face from the sun in Isaac’s windows. Only Isaac could comprehend Wadsworth’s sacrifice: the albino wouldn’t have exposed himself to the ruinous effects of daylight unless he had something important to deliver.
Barney Rosenblatt interrupted him. The Chief of Detectives blundered into Isaac’s rooms, his suspenders forking with irritation. He wouldn’t address a nigger bundled in blue suede. So he pretended Wadsworth was invisible, and he carped at Isaac. “Are you crazy? You bring a clown to Headquarters? Couldn’t you negotiate with him someplace else? You’ll give the PC a shit fit. Gloms like that leave an odor. Isaac, he’ll scare the pants off my men.”
“Eat it, Cowboy,” Wadsworth said, picking dust off his sleeve.
Barney lunged at Wadsworth without taking his eyes away from Isaac.
“Out,” Isaac said. “This man’s registered to me. You do him any harm, and I’ll collar you so fast your tongue will fall off.”
Barney glowered behind his suspenders, at Wadsworth, Isaac, and Newgate. “Isaac, take the cotton out of your ears. This is Barney Rosenblatt, remember? I’m not Manfred Coen. You won’t have a piece of wood left in your office, Isaac, if you come down on me.”
“Pistols, Barney, is that what you want? Come, we’ll have a shoot-out in the hall.”
“Isaac, don’t be wise.” And he trudged out, the pearl handle of his Colt wobbling like a nasty stick in his pocket. Wadsworth didn’t smirk; he had no interest in Barney Rosenblatt. He could piss on the walls at Headquarters, dangle his prick in front of any commissioner. Wadsworth was immune from arrest. If the burglary squad caught him napping on a fire escape, or prowling in a shoe store after midnight, they had to let him go. He belonged to Isaac and the First Dep. Wadsworth had once been a practicing arsonist. Now he was semiretired. Not even the First Dep could rescue him if a baby died in one of his fires. So he abandoned his career as a “torch” under instructions from Isaac. He burned only vacant buildings and parking lots. “I’m sorry to cause you trouble,” he said, having to nod at Isaac around Newgate’s head.
“You’re no trouble to me, Wads. Would you like a cherry coke?”
“Isaac, we don’t have time for beverages. I think I found a lollipop for you.”
“Where?” Isaac said, the hump in his neck refusing to rise with Newgate around.
“At a hospital in Corona.”
Isaac rubbed his nose. “Corona? Why Corona?”
“Isaac, who knows? My uncle Quentin works in the emergency room. A kid crawls in with broken arms and legs. But there aint a scratch on the rest of his body. My uncle’s not a dope. That’s the mark of the landlord, Amerigo Genussa.”
“What kind of kid? White or black?” Isaac said, trying to throw off the FBI man.
“Isaac, you can see for yourself.”
Isaac rounded up his chauffeur Brodsky, Pimloe, his deputy whip, and his angel, Manfred Coen. Newgate began to whine. “Take me, Isaac. I’ll drop a portable lab right into the kid’s bed. You can tape him, fingerprint him, test his urine and his blood.”
Isaac couldn’t deny Newgate without creating a stink: the FBI man might blab to Barney Rosenblatt. “Come,” Isaac said, “but leave your lab at home.” The FBI’s could pull finger
prints and semen stains out of the ground with their magic laboratories. But it was never the print you needed, and the semen usually came from cats and dogs.
Brodsky telephoned for the First Dep’s sedan. He marched with Isaac, Pimloe, Newgate, and Coen to the ramp in back of Headquarters. They crossed the Manhattan Bridge, Newgate marveling at the enormity of Brooklyn, which, he believed, could swallow the whole of Maryland. Brodsky was happiest with Isaac in the car. Coen annoyed him. The chauffeur despised pretty boys. Coen was the one Isaac lent to the Bureau of Special Services when an ambassador’s wife grew restless in New York. Women stuck to Blue Eyes. He was the Department’s prime stud. Isaac could populate the city with white niggers, Puerto Rican stoolies, and beautiful woodenheaded boys.
A dumb Maryland Cherokee like Newgate could only come alive by touching Isaac’s sleeve. Isaac taught him how to sniff. He would plant evidence in your shoe, blackmail your sister, force Coen to romance your mother or your wife, until you could do nothing but cry out your guilt. This was’ Isaac the Pure, who didn’t waste his scruples on a thief.
They arrived at St. Bartholomew’s, a dinky hospital off Corona Avenue. The hospital couldn’t accommodate big police cars. Brodsky found a parking spot across the street. Wadsworth had no badge to show the hospital clerks, so he walked behind Isaac, with long, pinched lines developing in the suede. The five of them burrowed into the main ward, past nurses, orderlies, and patients in rumpled gowns. Isaac was looking for a boy in traction, with his arms and legs in the air. The search became futile. They caught an old man pissing behind a screen. The man threw a pill bottle at Isaac; it struck Newgate over the eye. Isaac closed the screen.
Wadsworth led him to a boy with plaster mittens on his hands and feet; none of the mittens extended beyond the ankle or wrist. The boy was Chinese.
Coen didn’t have to stare too hard; it was the boy who jumped on his chest at the Jewish youth center. He couldn’t decide what to tell Isaac. The Chief didn’t need prods from Coen. He examined the identification card attached to the bed: Stanley Chin didn’t have an address; his age was listed as sixteen and a half. The evenness of the mittens disturbed Isaac. He couldn’t be sure this was Amerigo’s work. The landlord’s hired goons wouldn’t have restricted themselves to cracking fingers and toes. They didn’t have that much finesse. The boy should have been bent at the elbows, or suffered a broken knee.
Isaac came up to the bed. His voice wasn’t harsh. “Stanley Chin, do you know me?”
The boy said nothing; he watched Coen and the albino in blue.
The Chief brushed against the bed’s high, criblike gate. “I’m Isaac Sidel.”
The boy pushed air through his nose and wiggled his teeth against his bottom lip. Did I collar the boy’s father, Isaac wondered, did I bite his family in some horrible way? He couldn’t remember capturing any Chinamen in the last five or ten years.
“Why’s Amerigo Genussa after you?” Newgate screamed at the boy. Isaac told him to get back. He promised to kick Newgate past the Rockaways if he interfered again.
“Stanley, tell me where your school is? Brooklyn? Queens? The Bronx?”
Wadsworth whispered to Isaac. “The kid goes to Seward Park. My uncle Quentin got that much out of him.” Then he moved behind Coen. Wadsworth was getting jumpy in the hospital. A white glare came off the walls. He couldn’t function without the buzzing of a movie screen. He was addicted to technicolor and dust on his face. He’d have to beg Isaac to ship him home pretty soon.
Isaac sensed the slithering motion under the suede. But he couldn’t free Wadsworth until he pressed the Chinese boy.
“Stanley, did you know I went to Seward Park? I graduated in 1946. No lie. I spoke at the school a few months ago. Do you remember that?”
The boy wouldn’t respond to Isaac; he rubbed the mittens on his feet while scrutinizing Wadsworth’s pink eyes and colorless hair. The albino had bewitched him. Brodsky nudged Isaac on the wrist. “Chief, you’ll never make this kid trading school stories. Ask me to step on his fingers, or let Manfred kiss him in the mouth.”
Isaac didn’t have the chance to scold Brodsky. The head nurse, an enormous black woman with a pound of starch in her midriff and her sleeves, descended upon all five of them. “What the hell do you mean busting in here without my permission?”
Brodsky answered her. “Lady, this is Chief Sidel of the First Deputy’s office. He goes where he wants.”
“Not in this hospital, fat man.” She turned on Wadsworth. “Who the hell are you?”
The starch bristled in Wadsworth’s eye, confounding him. He squeezed between Brodsky and the FBI man. Newgate fished for some identification. “Madam, I’m with the FBI.”
“Jesus God,” she said. “How did you lunatics get inside the door?”
Newgate’s Cherokee blood bleached his nose red. “Nurse, you can check me out. I’m Amos Newgate of the Manhattan bureau.”
“Sure,” the woman said. “And I’m Mother Goose.” She hovered over Newgate, her midriff buckling against her breast pocket. “That boy’s hurt. He don’t need crap from you.”
Isaac would have liked to borrow this nurse; she might hold Barney Rosenblatt away from his door. Pimloe was strangely quiet. The deputy whip usually fronted for Isaac, shagging different pests off Isaac’s back. Pimloe had to be in love, so Isaac mollified the nurse. “Mrs. Garden,” he said, reading the name tag on her starched chest. “You’re right to worry about Stanley Chin. He’s your patient, and we’re intruders in your ward. But we believe he’s been beating up old women and destroying grocery stores. I’m leaving two of my officers here. They won’t touch Stanley, I promise.”
He herded Wadsworth, Newgate, and the First Deputy men out of the ward. He stationed Brodsky in the hall. “Whoever visits the kid gets a tap from you. I don’t care if it’s an army of midgets. Find out who they are.”
“Isaac, should I stay with him?” Coen said, his cheeks slackening with drowsy lines.
“No, I want Pimloe.… Herbert, find the resident on this floor. Tell him to keep his bitches out of our hair.”
Newgate elected to remain at the hospital. Pimloe seemed morose. “Isaac, who’s gonna drive you out of Brooklyn? Wadsworth can’t take the wheel.”
“Coen will drive.”
Brodsky’s lips sank with contempt. “Chief, he doesn’t know north from south. He’ll lead you into the ocean. You’ll drown with Coen.”
“Wadsworth will save me,” Isaac said, anxious to disappear from the hospital. The Chief had an errand to do. He sat with Wadsworth and Coen on the First Dep’s wide front seat. Coen was hunched against the upholstery. Wadsworth kept his hands under his thighs until he had a crisp view of Manhattan. Brooklyn was a meager island in Wadsworth’s head. It didn’t have the proportions of a solid world. In Brooklyn the ground could sink.
Coen dropped Isaac at the Essex Street houses. Wadsworth tried to jump out of the car. Isaac was reluctant to grab some suede. He blocked Wadsworth with a knee. “You’ll offend my man if you don’t sit.”
Wadsworth seemed afraid to sit alone with Blue Eyes. Deep colors made him crazy. The albino convinced himself that a blue-eyed Jew could only be a witch.
Isaac was in the mood for old boyfriends. Stanley Chin had thrown him back to Seward Park. The Chief scrambled for Mordecai and Philip, recollecting conversations on the roofs, fistfights over Trotsky and Stalin, chess tournaments that ruined Mordecai’s appetite and made Isaac cockeyed for a week, as Philip dazzled them first with a strange opening and clubbed them over the head with his bishops and his rooks. Isaac had been fond of Mordecai, nothing more. Philip was his rival. He couldn’t touch Philip in chess, or harm his defense of Trotsky’s beautiful face. Isaac had always been a creaking Stalinist.
It was aggravation over Philip that caused him to abandon chess. Isaac studied the masters, absorbed the fierce play of his three gods, Morphy, Steinitz, and Alekhine, but Philip overshot all of Isaac’s theories with his rough knowledge of the board; Phi
lip moved with a crazy, internal music that contradicted Isaac’s chess books. And Isaac fell to brooding. His three gods had befouled themselves. Morphy, an American boy, once the shrewdest player in the world, drifted into voyeurism during the last years of his life; he would peep out of a closet dressed in women’s clothes. Steinitz, a Jewish midget from Prague, a man with spindly knees who revolutionized chess by discovering the patterns of opening play, died unloved in a beggar’s grave on Ward’s Island. Alekhine, the Russian genius, fled his country to play master chess throughout Europe and South America in a state of constant drunkenness, pissing on the trousers of an opponent, retching over chess clocks, and becoming the champion and sainted fool of Nazi Germany.
Philip himself went “blind” at twenty-four, lost his feel of the pieces, neglected to safeguard his king, grew restless at the board, and dropped out of tournaments. Philip became a businessman, selling lightbulbs and toilet articles to East Side stores, a husband, a father, and a recluse. His family life wasn’t so different from Isaac’s; both of them had stray children. Philip’s boy was a stubborn genius of fifteen who could clobber his father at chess since the age of nine. Isaac decided to chat with Philip and interview the boy; he was hungry for news of Seward Park. Maybe the boy could enlighten him about Stanley’s gang, and Isaac could also cry to Philip about his missing daughter, Marilyn the Wild.
One of the housing cops recognized Isaac in front of Philip’s building. The cop was slightly lame, and the pieces of his uniform didn’t seem to fit his body. “Chief Isaac,” he shouted, “if you’re shopping around for the lollipop freaks, try a new project. I control this house. Those bandits wouldn’t mess with me.”
“It’s a social call,” Isaac muttered. “I’m visiting Philip Weil.”
He rode up to Philip’s door. The buzzer wouldn’t work, and he had to keep knocking until his fist went dead. “Philip, it’s me … Isaac” The door opened for him. He couldn’t get in without hunching himself around Philip’s back. “Mordecai says you’ve been asking for me … Philip, what’s the matter?”
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