“Bull, we have to talk.”
“What about right now?”
“We can’t yatter on the horn, you dummy.”
“Meet me downstairs. I’m at the Brazos Barn. It’s an enchilada joint five minutes from the Warwick.”
“You followed me to Houston?”
“Wouldn’t be much of a Bureau, Mr. President, if we couldn’t anticipate your moves.”
Trevor Welles didn’t want Isaac to leave the room. “I can’t protect, sir, out there in Indian country.”
“I won’t fall on any buffalo bricks. I’m five minutes away.”
And Isaac lit out of the Warwick, into a sea of hot wind that smelled like a late autumn sirocco.
17
THE BIG GUY SWELLED WITH anger. He was prodded and fucked at every side, as if he were some mechanical cow, or the toy of Bull Latham at the FBI. The Bull and his men must have been right behind Isaac at the airport, with schnozzolas of their own. But the Bull didn’t have to wear a schnoz. He had his own fortress, a phalanx of men, with their blue field jackets and fiberglass vests. They were as hairy as his old football team and could overwhelm an airport, a rodeo, or half the towns in Texas.
Isaac wasn’t worried. He sailed right into the sirocco and found the Brazos Barn. It served tacos and white wine and was twice as expensive as the Bull’s own haunt at the Waldorf. It was Tex-Mex with a Houston twist, a converted barn with a zinc bar as long as a runway. The Bull seemed happy there. Nobody gave a damn that he ran the FBI. People recognized him from his days with the Cowboys. And they also recognized the Big Guy. But they left him and the Bull alone. Isaac didn’t see one of Bull Latham’s lads in their fucking field jackets and whiter than white shirts that could burn a hole in your head.
The Bull was smiling like a little boy. “Thanks, Mr. President . . . for picking me as your running mate.”
Isaac was appalled. “You bugged General MacArthur’s rooms, listened to my talk with the DNC? I could have you thrown in jail.”
The Bull was still smiling. “Isaac, we listen to everybody and everything.”
“But it was just a ploy,” Isaac said. “I wanted to hit Ramona Dazzle where it hurts.”
“It’s the sentiment that counts, Mr. President.”
“Don’t you bet against Michael. He’ll be living at the White House, not me.”
“It no longer matters. He’s damaged beyond repair. The more you prop him up, the harder he’ll fall. . . . What can I do for you, Mr. President?”
“I want Margaret Tolstoy to have protection around the clock.”
“It’s already been done. Nobody gets to see her, nobody. But I’d be careful, Mr. President. I wouldn’t trust Trevor Welles. He switches friends faster than a Tijuana whore.”
The Big Guy must have been going out of his mind. He could picture a Tijuana whore with Inez’s helmet of silver hair. And he had to hide the erection in his pocket. And this was the lad who was going to swerve around a constitutional crisis—Isaac Sidel of Manhattan and the Bronx.
“But Joey swears by Trevor Welles. I have to trust my own son-in-law.”
“Not if he was ever a Crusader. They’re killers, Mr. President, killers sworn to themselves, with their own mad loyalty oaths. And I can’t lay a finger on them. They’re all tied to some government agency, with clearance all way up to God and the White House—what should I do about Clarice?”
“Nothing,” Isaac said. “The country doesn’t care about her. She can’t compromise J. Michael, whatever she does. She wouldn’t have much currency with a kidnapper.”
“And what about your wife?”
“Ah,” Isaac said, “the Countess Kathleen.” She was an Irish beauty from Marble Hill. Isaac had married her when he was nineteen. She had smoothed his way with the Irish chieftains at the NYPD, or Isaac would never have risen so fast. He couldn’t have maneuvered without Kathleen. But she abandoned him and Marilyn, moved to Florida and bought up real estate in Miami and Key West. He could still remember the taste of her wild red hair. When he first met Kathleen, it seemed as if her scalp was like a forest fire. He’d always been dazzled by those wondrous maidens of Marble Hill, redheads who could devour whole bushels of men, swallow them with their Guinness. He might have been faithful to Kathleen all his life, or was it another one of Isaac’s big lies? She ran from him as he rose in the ranks, left him her bank account. Had she cuckolded Isaac, been in love with another man all the years they were together? But perhaps his own memory had gone south, and he’d humiliated Kathleen, shoved her away. No reporters could get to Kathleen. She wouldn’t give any interviews about that bearish husband of hers. She’d withdrawn into her Miami mansion, a millionairess many times over. She hadn’t even come to Marilyn’s wedding at Gracie Mansion, hadn’t seen her own daughter marry Vietnam Joe. But Marilyn had had nine or ten other husbands. The Big Guy could no longer keep count.
“Bull, I don’t think you have to worry about Kathleen. There are enough retired cops in Miami to fight off whatever mavericks might want to hurt me.”
“Isaac, I’ll still be her guardian angel and she’ll never know. But watch your back when you’re in alligator country with Trevor Welles.”
Isaac stared across the zinc bar. “Are there a whole lot of alligators between here and El Paso?”
“Miles and miles of them,” said the Bull. “And some gator could come out of the bayou and bite your ass off.”
“That would humble a man. I’d have to attend Michael’s coronation in a wheelchair.”
And he ran out of the Brazos Barn before the Bull could say another word. He was always running now, but he couldn’t recall his destination from one moment to the next.
* * *
The Bull just sat there. Even if he had the manpower, he wouldn’t arrest half the planet to safeguard one reckless man. Sidel loved to tilt against windmills as Manhattan’s Don Quixote. And the Bull wasn’t going to play his Sancho Panza. He himself had to tilt between President Cottonwood and the Pentagon. He also had to stroke David Pearl—the president was nothing more than David’s little man. And the president-elect was even more beholden to David. Cottonwood was a devious cocksucker, but Michael was a crook. Michael had sold himself to whatever whore was around. The Bull had a file on him that couldn’t even fit into a vault. Michael would never even get past his honeymoon period. There would be no honeymoon for J. Michael Storm.
The phone rang at the Brazos Barn. It was the Bull’s secure line. He had ten or twenty lines like that around the country, lines that couldn’t be traced, since their signals were scrambled by his own technicians at the Bureau.
He could hear the purring of David Pearl. But the old man seemed agitated.
“Latham, I could have Cottonwood pull you right out of your seat.”
The Bull smiled as he copied from Mr. Ansonia and purred into the phone. “And why would you do that, David?”
“Because Sidel is out of control.”
“But that’s your fault. The minute he’s about to land on his ass, you prop him up.”
“I can’t help it,” David rasped. “He’s my protégé. But I’d rather he never leaves Texas—alive or dead.”
“Sir,” the Bull said, “I pity the man who does Isaac in. You’ll haunt him into the grave with your own wrath. I’m not prepared to pay that price.”
“Go on. Be his altar boy. But don’t you interfere with the plans I have for Isaac.”
And the Bull’s secure line went dead. He grabbed a few salted almonds from a bowl. He was in no hurry. Until Isaac climbed aboard his yellow wagon train, Bull had nowhere else to go.
18
IT WAS WELL PAST MIDNIGHT. Isaac was in the lobby of the Warwick, mooning over a glass of milk. He sat behind a potted plant, where no one could intrude upon his privacy. And she wandered into his field of vision wearing that same backless blue dress she’d enticed him with at Cassandra’s Wall. It was another bit of make-believe. The woman he adored was all decoration. I love you, she’
d written. Leave me alone. And he did.
She sat with five men in the lobby, laughing and drinking. How could he not listen to that luscious roar of hers, the growl of her voice? It echoed under the Warwick’s chandeliers. Of all the hotels in Houston, she had to pick his. But he didn’t need Sherlock Holmes’ guidebook to tell him that she’d come here on purpose, to eat his heart out. Isaac couldn’t even appraise the five men. Were they generals, assassins, captains of industry, or actors playing their own cruel parts?
She didn’t trot off with any of them. She left these five clowns and wandered across the Warwick’s endless lobby. Isaac followed her into that labyrinth. It was as complicated as the Houston Ship Channel. He caught Inez as she was about to enter a tiny corridor. She wasn’t even startled to see the Big Guy. He should have kissed her and shut up, but he was too delirious.
“Did David send you here?”
“Yes and no,” she said. “I’m his eyes and ears.”
“Just like Eleanor Roosevelt. She went into coal mines for FDR, and you’ve come to the Warwick.”
“Isaac,” she said, “run home before Texas becomes your tombstone.”
“I can’t. But I could steal you from the old man and take you into the bayous. We’ll ride on an alligator’s back.”
She laughed, but that deep growl had gone out of her voice.
“Darling, it’s too late for alligators.”
He wanted to hit her, but he would have broken himself, not Inez. He appealed to her like a rat-poor minstrel.
“Stay with me tonight, and I won’t bother you again.”
She fondled his ears. “Isaac, we already had our honeymoon . . . at the Ansonia. And I can’t afford a second one.”
She shoved right past Sidel. He didn’t have the heart to stop her. If he had to have a tombstone, he wanted to share it with Inez. Texas couldn’t have been as deep a heart of darkness as the Bronx. He wouldn’t rush home. The Big Guy would have to be more vigilant than he’d ever been.
* * *
It pained her to see his shoulders slump. She was no longer certain whether the mask she wore belonged to Trudy or Inez. Perhaps she was the monster who had been bitten by her many names. She watched the big bear shuffle across the carpets. There wasn’t much sense in loving him. She loved him anyway. What would happen to Daniel and Darl if she moved close to Isaac and his crazy fire?
Ah, she was Inez tonight, Inez in a blue dress, and she didn’t have to think of how her identities spiraled back and forth. She returned to the lobby. The barman had come to her with a telephone. But she sent him back to the bar. All she had to do was wait.
He arrived around three in the morning with that linebacker’s grace of his. Bull Latham had always been light on his feet. He had half a dozen of his acolytes—men and women with bland faces and brutal eyes. They could have cracked her spine before she ever blinked.
The Bull sat down next to her. He had a bottle of Jameson in his coat pocket. Would he drink them both into oblivion or douse Inez in whiskey and set her on fire inside the Warwick?
“Inez, you’ve been a naughty girl. You had no license to come here.”
“But I had the names of some generals in my head. They were happy to meet with David’s social secretary. I had a delightful chat with them. They’re going to stuff the Bronx inside their shoes and shuttle between Houston and Claremont Park.”
The Bull took out his Jameson and drank right from the bottle. “That doesn’t concern you,” he said.
“It might not if Isaac Sidel didn’t have to be sacrificed.”
The Bull looked into her brown eyes. He wasn’t half as cruel as his own acolytes. “Sidel is a luxury you can’t afford. I could put you on a cargo plane and ship you back to the Ansonia in a dog kennel. David says he can’t sleep unless you’re on the thirteenth floor.”
“Tough,” she said.
But he knew how to menace her without his bottle of whiskey. “Did I tell you how I visited Darl’s school?”
“Shut up,” she said.
“David has appointed me her godfather. It ain’t every little gal who can share a milkshake with the director of the FBI. You’re a delinquent mother who cohabited with criminals in New Orleans. I can send Daniel and Darl into the courts, and they’ll be lost in the maze. You’ll never see your kids again.”
Inez reached out to scratch his face, but he laughed and clutched both her hands inside his paw.
“Don’t you ever go near my Darl again,” she spat at him.
“Why, she’s just about the prettiest gal in creation. She’s a pure delight. . . . And you listen to me. Stop meddling in Sidel’s business. You signed on with David, and I’m here to see that you stay signed.”
She didn’t even resist. She had no more feeling in her fingers. The Bull released them from his paw. She’d been on a fool’s journey. She flirted with the generals, tried to wean them away from the Bronx, but she did Isaac more harm than good. The generals had called David, who sent a distress signal to Bull Latham. Bull was both the puppet and the puppeteer. He did David’s bidding, but he had to be cautious around Sidel. Who knows? A miracle could happen, and Isaac might survive his Texas tombstone. So she winked at Bull’s acolytes and walked out of the Warwick with the FBI.
19
HE’D BECOME A KIND OF prince regent in the wake of a faltering king. No one listened to Michael, or bothered to interrogate him, but he was the president-elect, not Sidel. The yellow bus arrived on a cargo plane the very next afternoon. But Isaac had to wait for Marilyn, Marianna, and Michael. It was near the holiday season, and Marianna would only miss nine or ten days of school. But the Big Guy was adamant; he found her a Texas tutor and charged the tutor’s bill to the DNC. He didn’t know how Marilyn and Marianna would get along, but they were already like sisters conspiring against Isaac Sidel.
It was hard for Michael. His own advisers deferred to the Big Guy. But it was even harder for Martin Boyle, who’d arrived on the same plane with Michael. Boyle had fallen out of favor. He could barely get an interview with the Big Guy, who didn’t even have to depend on Trevor Welles and his Crusaders. He had his own “secret service,” detectives from Barbarossa’s old squad, burly men who guarded the mayor when he was on the road.
And while Martin Boyle brooded, Isaac went up to him and kissed his forehead, like some kind of pontiff. “How much did David Pearl pay you, huh?”’
“Not a dime. I serve my country. I can’t be bought.”
“Shut your fucking mouth, Boyle, or I’ll flay you alive—no, I’ll have my son-in-law do it. That’s what he did to the Vietcong.”
The Secret Service man swayed on his feet, like some crooner, but he had little to croon about. “Calder promised you wouldn’t get hurt.”
“You were sworn to protect me, Boyle, not to become a rat in my own camp.”
“Then why haven’t you kicked me off the detail?”
“Because you’re part of my family now, and I can’t discard my own bad sons. But if you betray me again, Boyle, I’ll have you pensioned off without a pension. You’ll have to beg like a blind man . . . get the fuck out of my sight.”
The yellow bus took to the back roads. They went through a town of shanties that wasn’t even on the map; it was a colored ghetto on a forgotten hump of prairie grass between Houston and Corpus Christi. The children never even bothered about Isaac. They were in awe of the Little First Lady. Marianna went into a shack and baked butternut cookies for the entire town. There wasn’t a school or a library that Isaac could see.
“We have to fix this place,” Isaac said to one of the town fathers. “Mayor to mayor.”
“We don’t need fixin’, Mr. Isaac,” said the mayor of this very visible invisible town. And he pointed to the television cameras and the reporters who had wandered into his dusty landscape with Isaac’s yellow bus. “And we sure as hell don’t need the damn publicity of politicians who have nothin’ better to do than ramble in the dust. We’re in love with the Little Fir
st Lady, but we’d rather love her from afar. Do you get my drift?”
“But we’ve come to help,” Isaac said like a supplicant.
“Sir, it’s better for us that white folks aren’t so aware that we exist—no neighbors are the best neighbors, that’s my opinion. We were near decimated a while back by our white neighbors. We pay taxes, even vote at the votin’ booth in Goliad. But that’s as much traffic as we can bear. . . . Be gone, Mr. Isaac.”
And the Big Guy had to drag his tail out of there. He wondered what other town he might ruin with his entourage. He passed through the craziest place he had ever seen, a ghost town filled with books rather than people. It was run by some lunatic bibliophile, who lived and bathed among his mountains of books. He welcomed the Pilgrimage of ’88, as this Democratic whirlwind was now called by the press. His name was Carter Greenhut. He’d made a fortune manipulating stocks and bonds and now withdrew into a wonderland of books. He had neither wife nor child, not even a pet alligator on a leash. He survived with just a servant-cook, who repaired broken pipes, fixed Carter’s meals, and had to drive fifty miles to the nearest 7-Eleven.
“Armageddon is a-coming,” said the bibliophile. “And I have to prepare for the prince of darkness.”
“With a battlefield of books?” Isaac asked.
“Satan is frightened of the Word. . . . The printed page can blind him.”
And Isaac wondered if Carter Greenhut had come out of the same mental ward as that shooter Billy Bob. He drank a cup of tea with Carter that had all the delight of tepid alligator piss and had to fly from the town of books before he himself went mad. Perhaps the Big Guy could outrun his own Armageddon. He wasn’t so sure. The people who lined the back roads waiting for the Democratic ticket had the look of the damned; they had reddish, raw eyes and mumbled to themselves. Isaac had to feed them whatever food he had.
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