The Brain
Broadway
But it was Arnold’s Little Brain who glanced at these letters first, and responded to them or threw their contents, with all their pathetic pleas, into the delicatessen’s wastebasket. He wasn’t running a Lonely Hearts Club for AR. The letters appalled him. Fathers trying to sell their own daughters to AR for the price of a sandwich; bachelors begging him for a loan to buy a silver kneecap or some other insane prosthetic device; mothers wanting to confide in him about the diminution of their sex life; old classmates and chums asking for an audience with the Brain . . .
Isaac groaned while David went through his inventory of notes to AR.
“Jesus, will ya get back to you and Inez in the Pierce-Arrow? I want some more meat on my potatoes.”
“Meat and potatoes,” the old man muttered and thrust the Big Guy right back into the world of Inez. She wouldn’t tease a little boy, though she was blunt enough.
“You’re Arnold’s little spy,” she said. “And I have to be nice to you. But I’m not the kind of girl who gives out sexual favors.”
“I didn’t ask for any,” he said, his pockets stuffed with the Brain’s markers and hundred-dollar bills.
“Shut up,” she said, and with all the aplomb of a dancer who had floated down glass and silver steps in the Follies, she kissed the Little Brain, sucking half his head into the deliciously moist tunnel of her mouth.
“That’s your future,” she said. “Don’t betray me, little man.”
And David never did. He escorted her to the delicatessen twice a week. Arnold might have gotten suspicious had his own Little Brain suggested that Inez sit at his table one afternoon or evening more than that. Meanwhile, Arnold’s markers began to mount.
He was a reckless gambler. He’d make a hundred grand on his various protection rackets and blow it on a bet about cockroaches climbing a wall. He’d always back the wrong roach.
Isaac clutched the old man’s dilapidated sweater. “Stick to the story. Inez.”
And David had to laugh. “What a sucker you are. I could have stolen your pants while you were listening. Grow up. Be a mensch.”
“I’ll have enough time for that when I’m mothballed inside the Naval Observatory.”
“You’ll never get there, kid.”
“I couldn’t care less,” Isaac told him. David wasn’t a sorcerer—he was Scheherazade.
He had Inez in the Pierce-Arrow five fucking years. He mixed cocktails for her from the limo’s little zinc bar, though she wouldn’t even allow him one sip.
“Alcohol’s bad business,” she said. “It’s not the right habit for a growing boy.”
She would smile and brush the palm of her hand against his erection, like some clever item performing a magic trick. But she wasn’t a clever item. Inez was always sincere, even when he grew into a boy of fourteen and she could have coupled with him in the backseat. She would have galvanized David, had him forever in his debt.
“I really like you, Davey,” she would purr, loud enough for the driver to hear. “Those brown eyes of yours really make me hot. I’m tingling like a potato on the fire. But you’d start to hate me, and I couldn’t count on you after that.”
And that’s when he first wished AR’s death. He couldn’t become her darling, her favorite little man, while Arnold sat and breathed at his table. And so he grew a little careless. He paid less attention to AR’s debts. And AR died because of a debt that David had noted in his books but had forgotten about.
Suddenly, his shoulders started to shake. He looked like a scarecrow in his sweater. He wasn’t much of a sorcerer now. It was Isaac who had to wipe the tears from his eyes.
“Kiddo, I didn’t need a Glock. I was his assassin.”
“Come on,” Isaac said. “He was marked for death.”
“And I was the one who marked him.”
“Okay, I’ll cry for the son of a bitch, but what happened between you and Inez?”
And David told him how Inez had become his mistress after a fashion. She slept with no other man or boy but him.
“But there was always a monster in the bed, like a gigantic medieval sword.”
“Arnold’s ghost, you mean.”
“No. Our guilt. I wooed her, and she must have been in love with me a little. But we felt like conspirators. Inez was nobody’s fool.”
She’d stare into his brown eyes after she came like a firecracker. And there was always that little smile. “Davey darling, I can’t get over Arnold. We willed his demise.”
He bought her flowers and little diamonds, took her on long rides in the Pierce-Arrow, which now belonged to him. She loved the panorama of Brighton Beach. She’d lived near the boardwalk when she started out at the Follies, a girl of fifteen, from Canton, Ohio.
“You Manhattanites mean nothing,” she’d crow. “It’s Midwesterners who made this town—me and Scott Fitzgerald.”
Fitzgerald had long been gone from Manhattan by this time, had run to Hollywood without his mad wife. But David wouldn’t contradict Inez. She began to shrink in his arms. Her skin no longer had the feel of Chinese paper. Most of her musk was gone. But he loved her more than ever. They’d become a pair of cripples. She wasn’t even thirty-five when she died in David’s arms, and she looked sixty. He buried her in Woodlawn, near the grave of Herman Melville, another New Yorker who had lived underground most of his life. But David’s “underground” was in a limestone castle. And he’d kept his own lit candle to Inez and AR, in that little mausoleum on the thirteenth floor.
“You’d love to wreck my life, wouldn’t you?” Isaac muttered. “Tell me where I can find Trudy Winckleman.”
“Kiddo, I don’t have room for another Inez in my heart. You’ll never find her. And if you come here again, we’ll hide you in the attic, and let the Ansonia’s red rats have a field day. Have you ever seen a red rat? They can eat through steel. Imagine what they’ll do to your blood and bones.”
And David’s own grim men tossed Isaac out of that stronghold on the seventeenth floor.
22
THE BIG GUY GOT NOWHERE with his snitches, or with the files on David Pearl at the NYPD. And so he went to his own mob source, Izzie Wasser, a.k.a. the melamed, who was the brains behind Manhattan’s Mafia clans, even after he’d had a stroke. They met at Ratner’s, a dairy restaurant near the Manhattan approach to the Williamsburg Bridge. It had long been downtown’s answer to Lindy’s, though it wasn’t a delicatessen and didn’t serve pastrami or roast beef. AR had never had his own table at Ratner’s. But Isaac did.
He knew that Ratner’s was dying, just as the old Lindy’s had died and become a tourist’s shrine at another location on Broadway. But he still had his table. Anyone could have walked in and shot out his lights, even as the nation’s vice president–elect. But Isaac was “untouchable” in his very own mecca.
“Sonny,” the melamed said, “I can’t help you.”
Isaac pleaded with him. “Iz, one lousy girl. Trudy Winckleman. Calls herself Inez. You have the best bloodhounds in the business.”
“And what would my sources be worth if I ever betrayed the old man?”
“Jesus,” Isaac mumbled, “what do you mean?”
“He’s been our banker for sixty years. He’s our landlord. He owns the building where we live—have some blintzes. You look like a ghost. We’re proud of you. New York’s next president, and you’re one of us.”
Isaac didn’t contradict the melamed. “Then show me some respect. Tell me where Trudy Winckleman is.”
“I could find her in ten minutes, but I won’t. And you shouldn’t rile that old man. He put you into the mayor’s chair and never asked for a reward.”
“Nobody put me in the mayor’s chair. The Republicans didn’t even field a candidate against me.”
“Did you ever ask why? He financed them for a hundred years, just to keep out of the race.”
Isaac got up from the table without touching his food. He kissed the melamed on the cheek an
d ran out of Ratner’s. But he didn’t get very far. Autograph hounds attached themselves to the Big Guy’s coat. Jesus, he couldn’t swat at them like flies. Soon he’d have to wear a fake nose in Manhattan—that was the limit. He wouldn’t walk around with a schnozzola on the same mean streets where he’d been wandering for fifty years. Finally, he broke away from the hounds. His cuffs were torn. He’d have to buy a new shirt in the barrels of Orchard Street. But there were fewer and fewer barrels. Orchard Street was becoming a wonderland of boutiques.
The Big Guy kept imagining Trudy Winckleman’s helmet of silver hair. Loath as he was to bring the FBI into the equation, he had to find her. No one but the Bull could pluck this second Inez from whatever hideout she was in. But he’d owe Bull Latham for life. He stood on Delancey Street and dialed the Bureau from a phone booth.
“Just tell him the Citizen needs a favor.”
He had to wait with static in his ear.
“Sir,” a voice said, “the director will be with you in sixty seconds.”
“What the fuck is taking him so long?” he growled into the phone.
The Bull appeared in a Town Car. Isaac was disappointed. He’d been dreaming of David Pearl’s Pierce-Arrow. He climbed into the backseat.
“You followed me to Ratner’s, didn’t you?”
“When you sit with the melamed, what do you expect, Mr. President?”
“Then arrest me, you motherfucker.”
The Bull started to laugh. “And if I did, we’d really have a crisis. The country couldn’t survive another election—we all depend on you. Besides, the melamed is one of my best informants.”
Isaac fell into a deep gloom. “The melamed belongs to the Bureau? I’ll never believe it. None of the clans could exist without him. He’s the real referee. He settles all the disputes. . . . Bull, you ought to be president of the United States.”
“Mister, I already am.”
“That’s grand,” Isaac said. “And what about the wizard, David Pearl, is he also registered with the Bureau?”
“Not a chance,” said the Bull. “He could buy and sell the melamed. But I’d watch out for that little number of his, the whore he kept on his thirteenth floor. She ran a whole string of snatch houses in New Orleans.”
“I thought she was only the bookkeeper,” Isaac grumbled.
“The bookkeeper-madam. Quite an inventory she had . . .with her silver hair. She had every politician in Louisiana eating out of her lap. Pearl must have paid a fortune to lure her from the Vieux Carré.”
“She was destitute,” Isaac said. “The old man let her stay on at the Ansonia. He told me himself. She has some kids in Connecticut.”
“That’s where we’re going—to Connecticut.”
The Bull wanted to roar right across the Williamsburg Bridge and invade Connecticut from Long Island Sound. The Bureau had its own ferryboat waiting for Sidel.
“It will be like Washington crossing the Delaware. But you’ll be rescuing your lady love on this ride.”
“Fuck the ferryboat,” Isaac said. He wouldn’t cross into Williamsburg; he always felt like a stranger in the wilds of Brooklyn, where no mayor, not even Isaac, had ever ruled. He had the Bull proceed up Manhattan’s spine and spill into the wilds of East Harlem, which was much more familiar terrain. They skirted the ancient site of the Polo Grounds, like a wound in Isaac’s heart. Yankee Stadium was just another castle to him. Isaac had lived at the Polo Grounds, had stolen through the gate countless times as a boy. He loved the New York Giants almost as much as he loved AR. He could become the next Methuselah, celebrate his thousandth birthday, and he still wouldn’t recover from the Giants’ betrayal of New York—they lit out for San Francisco like a pack of greedy dogs. The bastards took Willie Mays, who had to stop playing stickball in the streets of Harlem. He was never the Say Hey Kid in San Francisco, just another ballplayer with a sweet bat and glove . . . and without the empty plains of the Polo Grounds.
Isaac grieved. He wouldn’t let Bull Latham onto the Cross Bronx. “I’ll become a dynamiter, Bull, I swear. I’ll blow it all up.”
“Why bother? They’ll build another one.”
“I don’t care, as long as Robert Moses writhes in his grave.”
The ride started to rankle Isaac, as they went through neighborhoods that Moses had ripped right from the ground. They were in the middle of a wasteland, with rubble, rude grass, and concrete storage bins, where the Bronx had once had its Strivers’ Row—East Tremont, enclave of the lower middle class. The Big Guy had been in love with a Tremont beauty. He rode the Third Avenue El half the night to see his Rosalind. But her father didn’t trust a boy with woolly ears. Isaac had to sneak her into the Loew’s Paradise. That was his only boudoir. They kissed for three hours under the Paradise’s “atmospheric” sky—a constellation of clouds and brutal, blinking stars. But she’d sworn herself to a midshipman in the navy and wouldn’t let Isaac near her bloomers. That must have been around ’47, when Isaac was still a young gallant from the Lower East Side. She sent him a fan letter a few years ago, swore she had never forgotten their trysts under the stars. She was now a widow of fifty-five, as handsome as ever. But Isaac didn’t have the heart to see her. It would have ruined his memory of Rosalind. . . .
They passed block after block of burnt brick carcasses.
“This is where the Pentagon will build its Reservation, isn’t it, Bull?”
“Mr. President, it’s a soldier’s paradise. The military will survive most administrations. The White House has a bunch of screaming children. But the generals don’t have to scream. I’d be a liar if I told you I wasn’t betting on them.”
“But the mayor of New York watches over real estate. It’s his barn. I could have shut down Yankee Stadium even after the strike was over. And it’s too bad that the Giants disappeared before my watch. I would have sued the shit out of them. They’d never have gotten past the Harlem River.”
“Or else they could have learned to swim. But it doesn’t matter, Mr. President. Your town will soon have another mayor.”
Isaac closed his eyes as they bumped onto the New England Thruway. He couldn’t say why, but he dreaded meeting Trudy Winckleman in Connecticut. Perhaps he could only love her as a museum piece. He was a great big romantic bear. But it wasn’t in the realm of romance. Something else bothered the Big Guy. His intuition had abandoned him beyond the borders of the Bronx. He was headed for heartbreak.
23
SHE LIVED IN A MODEST ranch house in the woods near Waterbury. It looked as if it had been built out of tarpaper and tack and might not survive the next hurricane. He didn’t ask the Bull to come inside with him. But he cursed himself. He should have brought her flowers or some book, like Anna Karenina. His biggest sorcerers at City Hall had told him there would be no books in another ten thousand years. Paper would turn to dust, with all the bricks, glass, and concrete. The Ansonia itself would disappear. Isaac didn’t give a damn. But he would have been lonely without his favorite characters.
He’d only had one semester at Columbia College. He still wept over Anna and that rascal, Richard III. He, too, would have given his kingdom for a horse. And if he’d ever had Richard’s gifts, he might have wooed his silver-haired lady with nothing but words. His mind was broken, and he couldn’t remember how many children Karenina had—one with her snake of a husband and another with her weak-willed adorer, Count Vronsky? And how would Isaac deal with Inez’s own kids? Was he as weak as that adorer? Or would he ride into the plains with Inez, renounce his own vice presidency?
He knocked on her door. There were no hobbyhorses on the lawn, no jungle gyms, not a single sign of Inez’s brats. She still had that silver helmet of hers. But her eyes had gone dead at the first sight of Sidel. He wanted to leap into the woods and live with all the wild deer.
“Come inside,” she said. He had to follow her like a wayward pilgrim. They landed in the kitchen. A man was sitting at the table. He wore a holster without a gun. He could have been a lost tro
ubadour, or a defeated wolf, with stubble on his chin and a listless, cruel look. He was much younger than Isaac. That’s what hurt. She introduced him as her husband, Arno. He nursed the same green bottle as the Bull, drinking Jameson whiskey in the middle of the afternoon.
“Trudy,” Isaac said, “I didn’t mean . . . ”
And now her eyes lit with a touch of fever, like those stars in the ceiling of the Loew’s Paradise.
“Darling, I’m still Inez,” she told him. “And Arno can’t stay. He has chores to do.”
This troubadour left the kitchen without a word. And then Inez started to weep. Her shoulders shook. She turned away from Isaac. “Don’t look at me. I’m a witch whenever I cry. My face puffs out . . . and my hair starts to sizzle. Can you imagine that? A mama whose own head is a fire hazard.”
He didn’t know what do. He was another lost troubadour. He wanted to hold her in his arms, swallow up whatever fears she had, like arrows in the chest.
“You weren’t supposed to come here,” she said. “That was the deal. David said you would never find me.”
“But I did find you.”
Suddenly she started to cackle. And she could have been the witch of Connecticut. And then her face softened again. She almost smiled.
“My poor little darling, how dumb can you be? You weren’t supposed to find your Inez. David closed every resource, locked you out of my life.”
She was wearing a sweater, as old and worn as David’s. And then he realized that it was one of David’s relics. Another museum piece. And the Big Guy was brutally jealous. Part of the sleeve had begun to unravel, and Isaac touched the threads.
Under the Eye of God Page 14