Montezuma's Man (The Isaac Sidel Novels)

by Jerome Charyn

  “Boss, you’ll get embarrassed about your brother. And you’ll hate it if I see you cry.”

  “I won’t cry,” Isaac said. “I promise.”

  Barbarossa had become his noble savage, Friday with a pink face and a black stocking mask. He moved in mysterious rings around Isaac, repairing his life.

  The store was a bombed-out zone with racks of clothing that seemed to extend for half a mile, like Isaac’s red grass. He asked for the security department and had to travel into the heart of the store with Joe Barbarossa. They went down a flight of stairs into the darkness. A light was switched on. And Isaac saw his brother Leo inside a cage with six black men. With them was the warden, wearing handcuffs around his belt and carrying a policeman’s billy. He was an enormous man, this warden, like a thick, prehistoric creature that was beyond any of Isaac’s baseball dreams.

  “I’m Kronenberg,” he said. “You must be the Commish. And your chum?”

  “Detective Barbarossa,” Isaac said.

  Kronenberg laughed. “Your bodyguard and your babysitter.”

  “Yeah, something like that,” Isaac said. “Barbarossa’s my twin.” He was going to beat Kronenberg’s brains out. But he hadn’t said hello to his brother, who sulked behind the warden. “Kronenberg, how come you’re in that cage with all these men?”

  “It’s discipline,” Kronenberg said. “They’d be biting their fingernails without me … and robbing each other.”

  Kronenberg came out of the cage. He had to duck under the narrow door. He was half a head taller than Isaac. He didn’t even bother to lock the cage. Isaac had a much better view of Leo now. Leo had been stripped down to his underpants. Isaac shivered. Leo couldn’t seem to shake his short pants.

  “Kronenberg, I don’t like it when my kid brother is obliged to stand half naked in the dark.”

  “He’s a thief,” Kronenberg said. “And he’s not naked.”

  “A thief?“ Isaac said. “Have you read him his rights?”

  “I have him on tape, Sidel. He stole three pairs of pants and a shirt. And I don’t have to read him his rights. I interrogated him. That’s my privilege. I’m a licensed security man. I can’t keep going back and forth to the precinct all day. I collect the trash in this box and then I make a run to the precinct. It’s strictly legal.”

  “Is it legal to let men live in the dark?”

  “I’m saving electricity, that’s all, and teaching them a lesson. They’re all trash, including your brother. I checked him with our credit agency. He’s a chronic shoplifter. You can’t waltz him out of my jail, Sidel.”

  “I don’t intend to waltz him anywhere. You’re going to set him free.”

  “Not a chance.”

  Isaac peeked inside the cage, saw those seven unfortunate, masklike faces, and started to cry. He was thinking of Leo and the six black men cooped up in the cellar of a crazy department store. And he was thinking of Isaac, who’d sent his brother out on missions to protect his own supply of ration stamps.

  The warden began to gloat. “Go on. Get out of here.”

  Isaac socked him on the side of the head. The warden crashed into the cage and Isaac socked him again, grabbed the warden’s billy, dug it into the skin under his throat, and turned to Barbarossa. “Sorry, Joe. I didn’t mean to cry.”

  “Boss, lemme talk to the clown.”

  Barbarossa stooped over Kronenberg. The warden was blubbering now. “I have friends. I can get to the mayor.”

  “Mr. Kronenberg, the mayor is Isaac’s biggest fan.”

  “Then I’ll shoot the Commish.”

  “With what? He can tear up your gun permit, revoke your license. Do yourself a favor. Sign a release form for Leo Sidel.”

  “And the other six,” Isaac said. “I’m not leaving without them.”

  “Boss, you don’t even know what they did. They could have swallowed a couple of babies.”

  “I don’t care. Joe, I’ll kill this fat fuck.”

  Barbarossa helped the warden to his feet, found the release forms, guided Kronenberg’s hand, and helped him sign the forms. The six black men walked out of the cage, said good-bye to Leo, and left.

  Barbarossa found Leo’s clothes. He walked Leo out of the department store, with Isaac behind him, bewildered in that long, long corridor of clothes.

  Isaac sat with Leo in back of the sedan while Barbarossa drove across the ruins of the Grand Concourse and out to Indian Road, where Leo lived, at the very edge of Manhattan.

  “Isaac,” he said, “there’s a cop outside my building.”

  “I put him there. I have enemies, Leo. I wouldn’t want them to get any ideas.”

  “But all my neighbors see that cop, and they start expecting things.”

  “That’s not my fault … have you heard from Marilyn?”

  Leo said nothing.

  “Dammit, Marilyn leaves her husband and I’m the last to learn about it. Where is she, Leo?”

  “I’m not allowed to tell.”

  “Does she have money? Is she safe?”

  “Yes, Isaac. She’s safe.”

  “Will you give her a message from me?”

  “No messages.”

  “All right,” Isaac said. “Leo, you promised me you wouldn’t steal.”

  “I can’t help myself,” Leo said. He seemed destined to sit or stand in tiny jails.

  “Don’t I pay your fucking bills? You want clothes, I’ll buy them for you.”

  “I couldn’t wear them,” Leo said. “I need my own clothes. I’m fifty-two.”

  “You’re crazy,” Isaac said. “You’re a fucking kid.” He was crying again. “Leo, I shouldn’t have made you my mule.”

  “I’m nobody’s mule.”

  “But you carried my ration stamps … during the war.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “You walked in front of policemen with my stamps in your pockets. I couldn’t have done it.”

  “Big deal,” Leo said. “But at least I had a brother then, not some shit who plays God and punches people. Stop crying.”

  “Kill me, I’m a crier. Didn’t I get you out of that closet?… Next time I might not be able to save your ass.”

  “I know,” Leo said, and disappeared into his apartment house on Indian Road.

  Isaac’s face went dark.

  “What can I do, boss?”

  “Find me one of Jerry’s clubs.”

  “Boss, it’s fucking dangerous.”

  “I don’t care. We won’t do Brooklyn. Jerry’s expecting us. We’ll do the Bronx.”

  “He’s expecting us in the Bronx.”

  “I’m frustrated, Joe. I need some fun.”

  He didn’t want to drift back into dreams of Margaret Tolstoy.

  Barbarossa brought him to Belmont, an Italian enclave in the Bronx that hadn’t changed since World War II. It was its own small “Repubblica Italiana,” with live chickens staring out of cages, one eye closed, and little octopuses swimming in sea tanks. But Isaac hadn’t come here to shop for octopus meat. He and Joey put on their masks and entered Gerusalemme, a social club that was attached to a chicken market on Arthur Avenue.

  Barbarossa didn’t like it. Belmont was much too lively. And a little house of chicken feathers was always rotten luck. But he’d sworn himself to Sidel. Gerusalemme had the usual flock of old men, card players who drank peach brandy.

  “Little grandfathers,” Isaac said, “sit where you are. We came for your money, not your blood.”

  These same little grandfathers smiled at the Black Stocking Twins. We’re fucked, Barbarossa told himself. Three of Jerry’s shooters rose up from behind the club’s coffee counter with shotguns cradled in their arms. Barbarossa recognized Rinaldo Reese, a former detective who’d joined Jerry and became his captain in the Bronx.

  “Glad you could make it. Gentlemen, gimme your Glocks. Nice and easy. No funny stuff … how are you, Joe?”

  Barbarossa could feel that mad fire coming from the eye holes in Isaacs mask.
“Boss, we’ll have a massacre. You’ll hit the old men.”

  The Twins handed their Glocks to Rinaldo and took off their masks.

  “That’s beautiful,” Rinaldo said. “It’s like a dream. Now come into my office.”

  They went through a door behind the counter and into the back room of the chicken market. Barbarossa saw cage after cage of birds. The floor was matted with feathers and dried yellow droppings. Barbarossa wasn’t scared. If he had to live around such a stink, he’d rather not live at all.

  The birds were slaughtered in this room, and it had a constant aroma of blood, feathers, and shit. Barbarossa grew dizzy. He had to blink. His nostrils burned.

  Rinaldo laughed. “Enjoy yourselves. We’ll give you a first-class burial … Don Isacco, would you like to leave a couple of lines to the melamed? He’s fond of you. You shouldn’t have broke with Jerry. You were a terrific war counselor.”

  “And you were a crooked cop.”

  “Not like Joe. I didn’t have the Department behind me. And I didn’t have the FBI to bring me into the best killing fields … sing, Isaac, sing for your last supper. How’s Sal Rubino? Are you greasing his wheelchair?”

  “All the time,” Isaac said.

  “You shouldn’t have sided with Sal.”

  The cages exploded around Isaac. Birds flew into the air. Barbarossa sneezed and clutched his heart. The Commish hadn’t gone down. But Rinaldo lay in all the feathers and shit with the other shooters.

  Frannie poked through a wall of dust. He was with his coca babies. Isaac was bewildered. He’d seen twelve-year-old hitmen, but not like these brats. They had a professional pride and camaraderie that was beyond Isaac’s comprehension.

  “Isaac,” Barbarossa said, “meet Frannie Meyers. He’s LeComte’s troubleshooter in the Bronx.”

  Isaac looked at his belt. The coca babies had returned his Glock.

  “This is my borough,” Frannie said. “Jerry D. has to pay a tax if he’s planning to kill the Commish.”

  Isaac couldn’t take his eyes off the coca babies. He’d have to go back to public school, climb up the kiddie ladder. But he shouldn’t have been philosophizing so hard. The babies disappeared.

  Joey sat him down in the back seat of the Dodge. But he wasn’t all alone. Margaret Tolstoy, his Margaret, was on the cushions with a mop of orange hair.

  “Isaac,” she said, “Sal would like to see you.”

  6

  Barbarossa wasn’t in command of the car, Margaret was. A back-seat driver. He had two bosses now. Isaac and the bitch. He took his directions from her. He drove Isaac’s big black cradle into Manhattan and parked in a garage near the East River, while Margaret wiped the chicken feathers from Isaac’s eyes and hair. Margaret treated him like a baby.

  They rode upstairs to Sal Rubino’s penthouse. She kissed Isaac before she got off the elevator. Barbarossa started to understand the habits of forty years. She was crazy about the Commish, only she was Sal Rubino’s nurse, and the kissing would have to stop once she marched through Sal’s door.

  Rubino didn’t have regular soldiers. He had a pair of Mormons with field radios and closed-circuit television. He was the Bureau’s greatest resource in LeComte’s war against Jerry DiAngelis. Nothing could get built in the five boroughs without Sal Rubino and his little empire of cement.

  He wheeled himself into the parlor, wearing white gloves. Barbarossa couldn’t bear to look at him. Sal had lost his face. One of his eyes was closed, like the chickens of Arthur Avenue. And whatever skin he had was a forest of plucked feathers. He had one narrow curling line for a mouth. His chin receded into some featherless void. It was LeComte who’d found him in the bayous, who’d created this new fucking Sal, an adopted son of the FBI.

  He’d been a jeweler long before he was a don. He liked to make wedding rings for Margaret. He loved her, hated her, and had her as his nurse. She was a gift from LeComte. Sal was jealous of Isaac and Barbarossa.

  “He’s a loyal boy,” Sal said, talking about Barbarossa. “I never cared for that Captain White. A cop who can’t live without his rosary. It figures he’d have to kill himself. Isaac, I wanted Joey to shoot out your lights. I offered him a bundle, huh Joe?”

  “Yeah,” Barbarossa said.

  “Joey has scruples,” Isaac said. “He’d never shoot me for hard cash.”

  “Boss, I almost did.”

  “You’re saying that just to be nice to Sal.”

  “Boss, I had bills to pay. I would have glocked you … if the Cap hadn’t interfered.”

  “You’d have stood in the dark, under the bridge, like a spook?”

  “No. I would have done you face to face.”

  “I don’t believe it. You couldn’t have looked me in the eye and pulled the trigger.”

  “I’ve done worse, boss, much worse, to pay my bills.”

  Isaac could feel a knot under his heart where his tapeworm had once been. The tapeworm hadn’t recovered from Isaac’s coma. It died under the Williamsburg Bridge.

  “Isaac,” Sal said, “would you like a chair? Now I’m happy, I really am. Darling,” he said to Margaret. “Will you get Isaac an aperitif?”

  “I’m not your darling.”

  “Yes you are,” Sal said. “You rub my back, you sleep in my bed.”

  “Sal, stuff your aperitif. Why’d you bring me here?” Isaac asked.

  “You’re valuable property, you and Joe. The Black Stocking Twins. I couldn’t give you to Jerry’s people. Margaret would cry. She’s in love with you, Isaac. But Margaret belongs to me … and you ought to know the truth about my quarrel with Jerry.”

  “I know the truth. Jerry and you can’t exist in the same tribe.”

  “He was one of my captains, right? But how many captains have the melamed behind them? He’s nothing without that old man. And the old man wants my dolls.”

  “Dolls?” Isaac said.

  Rubino wheeled himself to one of his closets, opened the door, and removed an enormous, clanking figure with a long spike in the middle of its head. It was a doll with a helmet and green hair, black eyes, red lips, and a full suit of armor under a gold skirt. The doll was holding a sword in its right hand. The sword was large enough to have pierced Isaac Sidel. “Who is it?” he said.

  “Giuseppina the Brigandess.”

  Giuseppina was lovely and ferocious, like Margaret Tolstoy.

  “Sal, when did you become a puppeteer?”

  Rubino let Isaac have the doll. It weighed twenty pounds and was three feet tall, without the metal spike. Giuseppina’s shield was made of hammered gold. She had golden kneecaps, which could bend like any man’s.

  “All right, she’s incredible. But I wouldn’t kill for a doll.”

  “Yes you would.”

  “Does she have gold under her armor, Sal?”

  “She’s strictly wood, and the armor isn’t worth much. But she belongs to the greatest set of dolls on the planet. Isaac, didn’t your father ever take you to the Sicilian puppet theater?”

  “I haven’t been to Sicily, Sal.”

  “Come on. The puppets played New York. I went with my uncles a million times.”

  “I guess we didn’t belong to the same circle.”

  “Don’t insult me. You’re with my Family now.”

  “Sal, didn’t the melamed tell you? I’ve been drummed out of the Maf.”

  “You’re with my Family,” Sal said. “That’s why you’re here. You saved my life at Chinaman’s Chance.”

  “You’re a little senile. Or did you just happen to forget New Orleans?”

  “I didn’t forget. You killed me, and I put you in a coma. That’s the way of the world. Or I wouldn’t be telling you Family secrets.”

  “What secrets?”

  “The dolls, you dummy. There are fifty of them, and they’re worth a fortune.”

  “Who would buy a battalion of dolls?”

  “About ten private collectors, six museums, and five Swiss banks. And that doesn’t include a coup
le of holding companies in Monaco and Ireland, and whoever else is fronting for the private collectors … too complicated for you, Isaac?”

  “I collect baseball cards,” Isaac muttered. “But that’s different. I mean, a quality card creates its own market. It survives fifty, sixty years … a piece of colored cardboard with some print. It’s ephemeral. It’s not supposed to last. But I have a Joe DiMaggio in mint condition. I have a Mel Ott.”

  “I piss on Mel Ott. We’re talking dolls, not pinup pictures of men in flannel pants … you and your baseball. I grew up with the puppets. I went to every performance of the pupi palermitiani, right on Mulberry Street. I followed the dialects. I learned how to hate from those dolls, and how to caress your enemy with a little smile … those dolls were much more ephemeral than a stinking baseball card. They had to perform night after night. The armor broke. The heads fell off. No Sicilian doll ever lasted more than three years.”

  “What about your brigandess?” Isaac asked, stroking Guiseppina’s green hair.

  “That’s the angle I’m getting at. My little girl comes from a different line of dolls. She’s an aristocrat. Her puparo was the greatest of them all.”

  Joey,” Isaac said, “tell the don not to be so technical. Ask him what a puparo is.”

  “Isaac, ask him yourself,” said his own brigandess with the orange hair.

  “He’s the maestro,” Sal said, “the maker of dolls. He was called Peppinninu. But nobody knows his regular name. He put aside fifty dolls for his own fucking pleasure. But he didn’t have a workshop, like the other pupari. He was always on the run. He had to hide his dolls in different towns.”

  “And his own collection got scattered.”

  “That’s right. A couple landed in Cairo. Nine or ten got to New York.”

  “And you and Jerry have been competing for the fifty dolls.”

  “There are so many buyers, Isaac, I can name my own price. I was asking a million for every doll. I got a million. But now I’ve decided to sit. I’m not in the mood to sell Giuseppina.”

  “That’s what this crazy war is about? A miserable doll hunt? How long has it been going on?”

  “Five years.”

  “And all this time the melamed leaves me in the dark.”